


Until The Hunt Is Finished

by Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody



Series: The Dark Crystal Human AU [2]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, fellas is it gay to ask the guy you travel across the country to hook up with to hunt you for sport?, hurt/comfort with a lot of discomfort in between, kink negotiation (kind of), mal listens almost exclusively to blue öyster cult, safewords (kind of), sil listens to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century piano compositions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24592237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody/pseuds/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody
Summary: Migration is an instinct, a calling, a tradition. It drives caribou all the way across the tundra to calve. Monarch butterflies embark on journeys so great that they require several generations to complete. The Arctic tern is so specialized in migration that it can traverse the entire planet, soaring from pole to pole.And then there's Mal: hopping trains and hitching rides across the country, just to visit the most despicable man he's ever met.
Relationships: skekMal/skekSil (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Dark Crystal Human AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778182
Comments: 29
Kudos: 37





	1. Commensalism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **commensalism** : _n_. a relationship in which one individual benefits while the other derives neither benefit nor harm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who ordered the multi-chapter MalSil human AU set in Boston, Massachusetts? No one? Great.

_Well, let us try once more this magnifier  
Of pride and passions. Let it burn us through.  
Come, take of me whatever you require:  
I shall not tell you what I steal from you._

_— Louis Untermeyer _

* * *

In nearly four decades of travel, Mal had seen just about every part of the continental United States, plus quite a bit of Canada. The north was his favorite—the weather was harsh, but it was easy to keep to himself up there. He also made a point to swing by Gra and Goh’s heat blister of a home in Arizona every few years, to see if they’d gotten any crazier since his last visit (and—what a surprise—they always had). He’d even gone to Florida once or twice, considering it a particularly unique test of his survival skills.

One region that he tended to avoid, however, was the northeast. If Florida was the country’s flooded basement, then New England was its drafty attic.

Mal hated almost everything about it. He hated the violent changes of the seasons, and the way the asphalt cracked when the temperature fluctuated, as if something were underneath it and trying to break free. He hated the slushy snow and the salt marshes and the rotting crabapples on the sidewalks and the tree sap that ruined street-parked cars. He hated the quaint and dusty bed and breakfasts, the storefront windows either stuffed with antiques or hauntingly empty, the smell of seafood, and the stupid town names that he could never figure out how to pronounce.

He hated the towns themselves, too. He couldn’t get a handle on them. There were picture-perfect towns with cute little diners, buildings that had been preserved since the 1800s, and a crime rate so low that the local police kept busy by tracking down the occasional escaped farm animal. The wild turkeys that roamed the streets and backyards were responsible for more criminal activity than the people. And then, just one town over: gangs and gun violence, heroin overdoses, and neighborhoods full of foreclosure auctions.

The stark differences between these small towns were only emphasized by how crowded together they were, pressed up against each other with no room to breathe. It was nothing like out west, where you could drive down the road and watch the unpopulated land roll by your window for hours. Up here, you couldn’t leave one town without immediately arriving in another. There were precious few places to go to escape other people, and Mal, frankly, wasn’t willing to risk staying in any of them. He had always scoffed at his family’s religiousness, putting no stock in concepts like the afterlife or spirits, but…well, he didn’t _not_ believe in them, either. He was a paranormal agnostic—laughing at the idea of ghosts, but not enough to camp out in the backwoods of Maine or New Hampshire or Vermont.

Which brought him to the other reason he hated New England, a very simple reason compared to the rest: it was fucking expensive. He avoided the sleepy eeriness of the small towns by sticking close to the city, but even the most affordable rooms dug deep into his pockets. Luckily, Mal was a resourceful man, and he knew where he could probably—most likely—find a meal, a drink, and even a place to spend the night without spending a dime.

All he would have to pay was the enormous toll on his pride.

* * *

Hitchhiking got him as far as Newton, and after a surprisingly quick subway ride that nevertheless left him wanting to murder everyone on the train, Mal finally arrived in Boston. He left the station as quickly as he could, trying not to breathe until he was at ground level again and had access to relatively fresh air. Despite all he hated about the city, he could at least look forward to the smell of the sea, sharp and invigorating.

Instead, he smelled the harbor. Tidal backwash. Broken pipes. A constant sluice of water, leaking or gushing or dripping. It gave the city not just a clammy kind of cold, but a clammy smell, the coastal marsh winds and briny air of seafood restaurants seeping into Mal’s nose and clinging to the back of his throat. It wasn’t like the arid brush and prickly cactuses of the southwest, or even the full-on swampy atmosphere of the deep south. New England looked like it should be dry, but felt wet. Springtime thaw, summer humidity, autumn rain, and winter slush. The plant life either mossy, fungal, or oozing sap. It felt like a city where it had always just rained.

Mal stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep warm, and—after checking a nearby directory to figure out where the hell he was going—began to make his way north. He kept his eyes down just like everyone else, relying on his own judgment and the flow of the crowd rather than traffic signals when it was time to cross the street, despite the bombardment of car horns.

Mal had always had a good sense of direction, but this city and its cow-path roads had a way of confusing his inner compass. It was both exactly as he remembered it and bafflingly foreign. He tried to follow familiar landmarks from his last visit, but after the ninth Dunkin’ Donuts and the sixth Irish pub, it was hard not to doubt his memory.

But he persevered, and finally, he found the bar he was looking for. It was in a quiet area, tucked away from the main roads down a sparsely lit one-way street. The sign above the door was subtler than others of its kind: a simple wooden plaque, with the name _Stonewood’s_ carved and painted in a tasteful, old-fashioned script. Weather and age had had their effect on it, but then, they’d done the same to Mal.

He stood out on the sidewalk for a minute, keeping away from the windows and staring at the door. His back and shoulders, which had carried his duffel bag all day, and his stomach, which had been subsisting on jerky and trail mix and multivitamins, urged him to go inside. His pride, his ego, and his self-respect urged him to turn around and go right back the way he’d come. He could, and routinely _did_ , find a suitable meal and adequate shelter for the night wherever he went. He didn’t _need_ to come here for either of those things—or for anything, really.

But, as usual, the tangible instincts won out over the intangible ones. Mal spared a few more seconds to berate himself before he took his hands out of his pockets, pulled the heavy wooden door open, and stepped inside.

He stayed close to the wall, making sure the door shut quietly. As the warmth of the restaurant started to soak in, Mal looked around and was relieved to find that the place was still as unassuming on the inside as it was on the outside. Lights not too bright and not too low. No tables for groups larger than six. A steady rotation of oldies and classic rock playing over the speakers, but not over any conversation. Simple, reliable food, and local brands that formed the backbone of the drink menu.

And across the room, seated at a high top by the wall, was Sil. He was facing the door—a detail Mal picked up on immediately, as he would never dream of sitting with his back to an entrance or exit, either—and was engrossed in the manila folder and various papers strewn across his table. He was quite the workaholic, from what Mal could remember, but even so. Drinking alone over paperwork on a Friday evening in downtown Boston was a pretty grim snapshot of a person’s life.

Mal knew he’d been standing by the door too long; the bartender had glanced in his direction a couple times already. He considered getting a drink, just to have some kind of prop in his hand, but the longer he waited, the greater the chance that Sil would notice him first. So, with a sigh of resignation and a not unwarranted amount of apprehension, Mal made his way across the room. He half-expected Sil to look up just as he arrived and steal the element of surprise, which was Mal’s only real advantage at the moment, but he was utterly absorbed in his work, frowning as he flipped one piece of paper over another to compare numbers. His drink sat at a corner of the table, untouched.

When Mal was close enough to say something, he realized he hadn’t actually come up with anything to say. He liked having basic scripts prepared when he needed to deal with people, and usually, they played out fine. But Sil lived to upset plans and control conversations. The fact that the stakes were as low as could be did nothing to deter him—in fact, the pettier, the better.

So Mal decided not to overthink it, and when he got within a few feet of the table, he went with the first and most natural thing that came to mind:

“Hey.”

Sil didn’t look up right away, probably assuming that Mal was one of the wait staff, sent to annoy him with questions like “How we doing over here?” or “You all set with this?” He finished scribbling a few more numbers down before he deigned to acknowledge him, but when he finally did, his reaction was worth the wait. His gaze—irritated, and struggling to refocus after who knew how many hours spent staring at fine print—went to Mal’s neck, not accounting for his height. When he looked up further and met Mal’s eyes, he nearly did a double take. Slowly, he lowered the paper in his hands, taking a break from looking over his work to look Mal over instead. He’d been not only caught by surprise, but momentarily rendered speechless, which had to have been a first. Despite the heavy bag on his back, Mal stood up a bit straighter.

Off to a nice start so far, this visit.

“Remember me?” Mal said, immediately knocking himself down a few points with how clichéd and hopelessly cool-sounding that line was. Unnecessary, too—it was abundantly clear that Sil remembered him, even though their previous visit had been over a year ago, and only lasted one night.

“Yes,” Sil said, smiling a little, quietly pleased. Mal couldn’t tell if it was the sight of him that was pleasing, or just the sheer surprise of his presence. Sil seemed like the kind of person who only found delight in surprises, because he could always figure out how to turn them into opportunities.

Mal gestured to the empty chair, presuming rather than asking permission to sit. Sil immediately cleared a space, and Mal nudged a few pages away as he took his seat, instinctively claiming what was now his half of the tabletop. Always best to stake out some territory early on, he knew. If living in the wilderness and crashing at other people’s houses for the past few decades had taught him anything, it was that.

As Mal settled in, a waitress came by to ask if she could get him anything or refill Sil’s drink—peach moscato, as it turned out. Mal managed to ask for a beer without laughing at that.

“Well,” Sil said conversationally once she’d gone. “This is quite the pleasant surprise. And at my favorite hideout, too.” There was a glint in his eyes, playfully accusatory—the kind of look Mal might have doled out himself, but only to someone he was far more familiar with. “You aren’t _stalking_ me, are you?” Sil asked, inappropriately flattered by the idea.

“You think I don’t have better things to do with my life?” Mal asked. Sil shrugged easily, and Mal added, “This is the same place we met last time I was here. Figured it’d be worth a shot. And what do you know—I was right.” He gave Sil an almost admonishing look. “If someone _did_ want to stalk you, you’d make it incredibly easy.”

Sil laughed. “Creature of habit,” he agreed, bizarrely good-natured about the jab. He let the conversation dwindle for a moment as the waitress returned with a bottle and a glass. Mal ignored the latter, taking the bottle from her once she pried the cap off and nodding in thanks. When she left again and Mal took his first sip, Sil said, “You, on the other hand, I was _not_ expecting to see here. Especially after you left so abruptly last time.”

He waited for Mal to comment on that, and when he didn’t, Sil smiled. “Just _can’t_ stay away, can you?”

“Yeah,” Mal said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “The damp cold, the charming accents. The smell of clam bakes and every single homeless person’s UTI on the subway. This city has ruined all others for me.”

“Not the most glamorous destination. Especially in winter,” Sil said. Mal almost wished he’d fire back with an insult of his own. His steady agreeableness was starting to feel weird. “So,” Sil went on, “that begs the question of what brings you back this way?”

“Just passing through,” Mal said, and Sil smiled again. This was the other thing Mal hated about this area: there _wasn’t_ any “just passing through,” unless you were either traveling along the coast or headed straight into the Atlantic Ocean. This wasn’t one of those large states smack dab in the middle of the country, with vast expanses of farms or plains or deserts that you were forced to drive through on your way to somewhere more exciting. If you made it this far to the coast, then you came here with intent.

Of course, Sil didn’t draw attention to any of that, nor did he question Mal further. He simply let the obvious lie do its job, hanging in the air between them, full of implications.

Mal tilted his bottle toward Sil, pointing at him with it. “How about you?” he asked. “Still an accountant, or whatever?”

“No, actually,” Sil said, which took Mal by surprise. Sil didn’t strike him as the type of person to make a major career change at this point in his life. But his doubts were proved correct when Sil added, “I’m _the_ accountant. Got promoted a few months ago. CFO.”

“Ah.” Mal tapped his ring finger on the hollow part of the bottle, enjoying the sound it made, like a muted bell. “And that’s…good?”

“It’s several steps up, yes.”

“Congratulations,” Mal said, utterly incapable of caring any less. His plan, as much as he’d bothered to come up with one, was to keep the conversation light, but small talk had never been his strong suit. He tried to dig up any tidbits he could remember from the last time he and Sil were together.

It shouldn’t have been so difficult. Sil had spent a truly inordinate amount of time talking, but Mal had tuned most of it out, for the sake of his sanity. For whatever reason, the only snippet of conversation that stuck with him was a story about Sil’s coworker, who had once committed the heinous crime of taking the last Danish from the kitchen before Sil had had a chance to pick one out himself. With nothing else to go off of, Mal said, “So, does this mean you’ve finally got enough authority to fire breakfast thieves?”

It sounded about as lame as he expected, but Sil’s eyes lit up again. In his no doubt endless list of grievances, he was able to pinpoint the exact incident Mal was referring to, as if it had occurred that very morning. “Funny you should ask,” he said, unable to contain his glee. “My department happens to have lost _two_ staff members recently. Myself, due to my promotion, and my former colleague, due to her…timely dismissal.”

“…you actually fired her?” Mal said, not sure why he sounded so disbelieving. “Over a Danish?”

“Oh, no,” Sil assured him, his words dripping out like store brand syrup: overly sweet and blatantly artificial. “Of _course_ not. I don’t even _have_ the power to fire anyone, really. Besides, her performance history was riddled with issues. Poor work ethic, no rapport with clients, unreliable…believe me, by the time she left, a measly Danish was the farthest thing from my mind.”

“…what flavor was it?”

“Raspberry.”

Mal snorted. “All right. So, what happened?”

Sil looked overjoyed that he was being asked to recount the tale. He launched into the telling of it like he’d been rehearsing for just this moment, while Mal drank his beer and listened patiently. Sil took his time setting the stage, describing the layout of his office building and the habits of various coworkers in detail. He talked as if he were letting Mal in on valuable secrets, despite Mal neither knowing nor caring about any of the people involved. He almost wanted to resent Sil for making gossip seem fun, but the man had a way of making it all sound so intriguing and important.

Then again, the whole story had gone further than Mal expected. He’d only been joking about firing the woman, but apparently, Sil really was the type of person to remember every slight that had ever been dealt to him, intentionally or not. And if his petty vengefulness weren’t enough on its own, the fact that there were real consequence for his coworker’s actions meant that Sil had managed to convince their boss that firing her was a reasonable and justifiable move.

He’d made it seem like it _was_ his boss’s decision, as it turned out, feeding him little comments now and then like a devil hitching a ride on his shoulder and whispering in his ear. _How_ much sick leave had she used so far that year? Didn’t she always seem to schedule her vacation days at the worst times? Remember when she saved them up and used them to get a jump on Christmas break, leaving the rest of the department scrambling to finish the end-of-year filing without her? _Remember_?

Sil’s only redeeming trait seemed to be his gift for storytelling. He embellished at all the right moments, keeping the tone light and humorous, playing up the drama just enough to make Mal almost overlook the fact that, in the end, he really had gotten a woman fired over a fucking Danish.

“Well,” Mal said once the epic saga of betrayal and retribution was finished, “good job on not letting the power go to your head, I guess.”

Sil gave him a sarcastic smile, then finally took a sip of his drink, which had to have been at room temperature by now. “Office life is boring when there isn’t some kind of scandal,” he admitted—yet again refusing to defend himself against Mal’s halfhearted jabs. “I’m sure it’s not as interesting as whatever you’ve been up to. Speaking of which…how long will you be ‘passing through’ the city?” Mal shrugged. “And where are you planning to stay?” Sil asked, conspicuously casual. Mal picked at his coaster, soaked with the condensation pooling at the base of his glass.

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmmm…hadn’t decided the last time you came here, either. Couldn’t afford a hotel room, remember? Poor you,” Sil said, in that mawkish voice of his.

“Poor me,” Mal agreed, taking another sip of beer so he wouldn’t have to look at Sil’s face. It was so expertly contrite, his eyebrows knitted together with just the perfect amount of sympathy. The man would’ve made a phenomenal funeral director, if it weren’t for his voice, smile, and general air of self-serving smugness. No matter how polite and pleasant he acted, the acting bled through.

“Are you doing any better this time? Financially speaking?”

“Marginally,” Mal said, with some hesitation. He was excellent at resisting temptation, but in fairness to himself, he’d never met anyone who was quite as good at making offers as Sil. He seemed to be maintaining a safe distance, though, sizing Mal up and trying to privately work out what he was doing here before he started to take control of the situation. Sil craved control, that much Mal knew, but he didn’t blindly grasp for it. He had to feel his way along the path, testing it with each step. It took time for him to achieve his goals or bring his plans to fruition, but when he got there, even his detractors had to admit that—in some perverse way—he had earned it.

The ones whose contracts hadn’t been terminated in his wake, anyway.

Frankly, Sil had spent most of this brief reunion so far reminding Mal why he was so despicable and untrustworthy. And yet, Mal couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. Not just because his feet were sore, or because it was cold out, or because spending even a day on his own in this city would be too expensive for comfort. It was Sil. Something about him was so offputting on an instinctual level, but impossible to fully stay away from. It was an aposematic display with the opposite intended effect: the more Sil let his true, noxious colors show, the more drawn to him Mal felt. Maybe Sil was the latest in a long line of ways to test his survival skills.

Maybe Mal was just getting bored, out there in the wilderness all by himself.

He tried to play off his ambivalence as cool apathy, and Sil seemed to be doing the same. “It _is_ my day off tomorrow,” he said lightly. Mal raised his eyebrows.

“You get days off?”

“Well, technically. Always on call, but…” Sil shrugged as he trailed off, which seemed to be as clear an invitation as Mal was going to get. He thought it over for a moment, pretending this wasn’t his sole reason for coming back to this city. Then he sighed and downed the rest of his beer in one gulp, which was as clear an answer as he was going to give.

Why the hell not.

* * *

The downtown area was aggressively windy, courtesy of the skyscrapers, but Sil’s apartment was a short enough walk that they couldn’t justify getting a car, which was fine by Mal. Walking through the cold together put them on somewhat equal footing, whereas getting into a car and allowing himself to be driven to Sil’s place would have undoubtedly felt like a hostage situation.

When they arrived at Sil’s building, Mal was struck once again by how nice it was. No wonder, he thought, letting the doorman usher him inside. With Sil’s recent promotion, a place like this was surely well within his budget. Plus, as the head accountant or whatever he called himself, he likely knew how to skim those bonuses he so earnestly believed he’d earned off the top, embezzling his way into one of the nicer apartment buildings in downtown Boston.

Mal squashed that thought shortly after it arose. Sil was a backstabbing, treacherous slimeball of an employee, but there was no reason to think the man was an actual criminal. Just smart.

The elevators were polished and gilded, and the ride up was fast and smooth. Once they reached Sil’s floor, Mal followed his host to the end of the hall, hiking his bag higher on his shoulder. Sil fiddled with his keys for a moment, and then, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek chivalry, he opened the door and gestured for Mal to go on through.

The apartment looked exactly as Mal remembered it. To be fair, there weren’t a lot of details to overwhelm his memory. The walls were bare of any photographs or art. The kitchen was sleek and stylishly minimalist. The living room was sparsely furnished in the same manner, with an armchair that looked like it had never even been sat in. The high ceilings made Mal feel oddly exposed, as did the full-length windows that made up the far wall, but it wasn’t a feeling he minded. Like an eagle’s nest at the top of a tree, the height alone provided a sense of security.

Mal’s distaste for the city hadn’t abated, but he had to admit—if only to himself—that the view from this vantage point, far above the noise and the grime of it all, was fantastic. He went to the window, looking out at the dark skyline, watching planes blink like fireflies in the distance. Against the black backdrop, signs flickered, windows stayed lit, streetlamps glowed, and traffic lights pulsed, like a visible nervous system shooting through the night.

Behind him, in the kitchen area, Sil was tactfully sorting through his briefcase of work documents, giving Mal some time to either scope out the premises or simply continue admiring the view. Mal was more than a little wary of his carefulness. Sil being careful felt an awful lot like Sil plotting something, though it was hard to get a read on his behavior either way. Mal supposed that was all part of his M.O.

When he heard the fridge open and something clink as it was taken off its shelf, Mal turned around. Sil was holding a bottle of wine, tilting it slightly toward Mal as an offering. “Drink?”

Mal hesitated. As tempted as he was to finally sit down and relax, just standing in an apartment as nice as Sil’s was making him feel grungier by the minute. He was almost self-conscious about it, but if Sil was willing to walk past his doorman and concierge with what appeared to be a middle-aged homeless prostitute in tow, then Mal refused to waste any of his energy being embarrassed. It wasn’t like that description was far off the mark, anyway.

“Actually, I’m gonna hit the shower first. Been over a day since I had a real one,” Mal said, which wasn’t technically a lie, just a severe lowballing of the truth. He made sure to state it as an announcement rather than a request—he’d been invited in as a guest for the night, and access to the bathroom was implicitly included in that arrangement. Staking out territory. Always a priority.

“Good idea,” Sil said, taking some of the air out of Mal’s confidence with one of his classic stealth insults. Still, he continued to play the role of a generous host, telling Mal to take his time and help himself to whatever he wanted.

Mal prowled down the hall to the bathroom, keeping his bag on his back until the door was shut. He placed it on the floor with a quiet sigh, rolling his shoulders and neck and then searching for the light switch. He grasped blindly for a few seconds, feeling something rectangular on the wall by the door but unable to figure out how to turn it on. Eventually, he felt a thin, raised portion along the bottom, and instead of flicking it, he slowly pushed it up.

The lights came on like a sunrise, starting off dim and then brightening to a soft yellow glow. Mal almost laughed. Of course someone as important as Sil couldn’t _possibly_ be expected to endure an assault on his senses like a light switch that went straight from dark to light. How could he ever cope under such harsh conditions?

Still, Mal did push the switch back down an inch or so to dim the lights again. He would never have wasted money on a feature like this if he had his own place, but the option was there, and it had been a long day, and he was tired.

He headed straight for the shower, where so many more luxurious options awaited him that he was starting to think this entire building was actually a five-star hotel. The shower was less of a stall than an entire section of the floor, tastefully tiled and blocked off by a set of glass doors. It boasted not only a detachable shower head, but also a rainfall shower head in the middle of the ceiling. It took Mal a few minutes to figure out how to activate it, but once he did, he stood perfectly still beneath it, letting the deluge rush over him.

 _This is it_ , he thought, as the residue of weeks of camping in the woods and washing up in rest stop bathrooms slicked off of him and went down the drain. _This is how he’s gonna get me_.

Mal knew a thing or two about animal behavior. The way he lived, he couldn’t afford not to. He knew that some predators stalked their prey—as Sil so cannily alluded to earlier. Others chased them down in an open pursuit. Some coordinated their efforts and, through teamwork, brought down an animal they never would have stood a chance against alone.

Mammals, mostly. That was where the human mind naturally went in terms of predators. Big cats, bears, wolves.

Snakes, on the other hand, had no claws or massive fangs for rending flesh. Sometimes they killed their prey by poisoning it, and sometimes by binding it. But first, they hypnotized it. Charmed it. Made it so that their quarry could be looking them dead in the eyes and still not run away.

Mal shook that thought off, stretching his back and then getting to work scrubbing the dense oil out of his hair with an unscented shampoo. There was no bar soap, just an expensive-looking body wash that Mal felt like an absolute priss for using. The peppermint smell was a bit much—it had always smelled too “spiky” to him—but he was still fairly grungy, and he figured the aggressively strong scent couldn’t hurt.

When he finally felt like he was as clean as he could get, he turned the water off. A small, misty bubble of warmth lingered around him, and he enjoyed it for a moment before he slid the doors open and braced himself for the cold. He was pleasantly surprised—although he shouldn’t have been, at this point—to discover that Sil’s ventilation system both kicked on automatically when the shower ran, and managed to clear most of the condensation without sacrificing any of the warmth.

In his haste to get to the shower, Mal had forgotten to do his usual inspection of the room. He looked around now, realizing that the adjustable light switch and the dual shower heads were far from the only luxury items in there. On the other side of the room was an enormous freestanding bathtub. It looked big enough for someone to feasibly submerge themselves in, even someone as tall as Mal. The faucet probably gushed champagne.

Mal grabbed a towel so thick and soft he was sure he could suffocate himself with it, and as he stepped out of the shower to dry off, he realized that even the _floors_ were heated. Sil wasn’t just a creature of habit, he was a creature of indulgence, as hedonistic as Mal was ascetic. When Mal went to the sink, he couldn’t resist opening the medicine cabinet, just to see what other amenities this bathroom could possibly have to offer. He was almost let down by how ordinary they were. Dental care items, basic first aid supplies. Cotton swabs. Eye drops. A few bottles of prescription pills, which Mal at least had the decency to gloss over without reading the labels.

He shut the cabinet again, and with a swipe of his hand, he cleared the mirror of condensation. He spent a few minutes assessing himself, noting all the ways he’d aged since the last time he looked at his own reflection. His hair was still mostly dark, with a single pair of gray streaks at his temples, so symmetrical that they looked intentionally placed. He liked his nose—sharp and slightly hooked—however much it reminded him of the rest of his family. His eyes were allegedly nice. Green. He’d never thought much of them one way or another, but they tended to net him some compliments wherever he went.

He rubbed his cheek and jaw, wincing at the stubble bristling beneath his fingertips. He’d deal with it later. Or not. If he could handle a little comfort in his life for a change, then Sil could handle a little discomfort. It was only fair.

Mal quickly ruffled his hair dry, managed to find some clean clothes in his bag, got dressed, and headed out to the living room again. It wasn’t particularly late, but Sil seemed to be winding down for the night. He’d changed into more comfortable clothes, too: loose-fitting pants and a matching, dark red shirt. Mal had no idea what he usually slept in, but he assumed this must be it.

Sil was sitting on the sofa, phone in hand, most likely doing something work-related. He didn’t have the air of someone who was scrolling just to kill time. But when Mal reentered the room, Sil looked up and smiled, putting the phone away and picking the wine bottle up from the coffee table. “I don’t really keep beer in the house,” he said by way of apology as he poured Mal a glass. “Do you like Merlot?”

“No,” Mal said, accepting the glass and taking a seat beside Sil, who topped off his own drink while he was at it. Mal leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, occasionally lifting the glass for a sip as he gazed across the room and out the window again. There was something soothing about the city at night, like watching a colony of ants. He was far from the noise, but there were always lights on, somewhere, glittering like flecks of mica. A constant and strangely reassuring reminder that the world never truly went to sleep.

“You look tired,” Sil said.

“I am,” Mal replied, though he hadn’t realized it until he had access to a clean, warm bathroom, treated water, and a soft couch to rest on. “It’s been a long…month, honestly.” He took another drink while Sil dimmed the lights, leaving only the reading lamp beside him on. Mal was vaguely aware of him shifting around, probably just to get more comfortable, and then he felt something on his shoulders. He flinched out of pure reflex, and Sil withdrew his hands, though he kept them raised in a placating gesture.

“Oh—too sore?” he asked.

Mal tried to relax again. “Nah,” he said, aware that Sil was allowing him to save face, giving him a way to ask for the massage without actually having to ask. “Just caught me off guard. Go ahead.”

Sil moved a little closer, and Mal turned away to give him a more cooperative angle, but not enough to fully let Sil out of his sight. Sil put his hands on his shoulders again, and after a few seconds of careful kneading, he clucked his tongue softly. “Tense,” he remarked, digging in deeper. “Tense, tense, _tense_. Even your muscles are made of bone.”

Mal was genuinely surprised to hear that. After the shower and the drinks, he felt more relaxed than he could remember being in a long time.

“It’s not good for you, you know,” Sil went on, trying vainly to pry the tension out of Mal’s body like squeezing blood from the proverbial stone. “Bad for your health. Nasty long-term effects.”

Mal thought that was a ridiculous thing for someone with a full-time desk job to say to someone who spent the majority of his time on his feet, and whose daily diet involved more fresh air, sunlight, and unprocessed food than Sil probably consumed in a week. And he might have said so, if Sil hadn’t chosen that exact moment to dig into the sorest spot, turning whatever Mal was about to say into a horribly involuntary, two-syllable noise of sheer relief. He could almost _feel_ Sil’s smile on the back of his neck, like a guillotine. He pressed harder, then released, and Mal’s shoulders slumped as he relented and let Sil do whatever he wanted, rocking back and forth gently with each push of his hands. Sil made a little noise of his own, like a hum of approval, and Mal bowed his head.

He had a sinking feeling, not in his gut, but all around him, like quicksand—at least according to the cartoons and comics of his childhood. He’d always had a somewhat paranoid fear of quicksand, but not because he was afraid of falling in. He worried that, despite his knowledge of the danger, he’d end up stepping into it of his own volition, just to see how dangerous it really was. Even the most self-destructive urges could overpower fear, if the curiosity were strong enough. The terror lay in the temptation.

Mal was already half asleep, and Sil seemed content to let him doze off without doing much of anything this evening. Of course, that only meant that tomorrow, when Mal woke up with renewed energy and a clearer head, he wouldn’t have the excuse of impulsive decision-making anymore. He’d have to actually give some thought to what he was doing here.

But that was tomorrow. Tonight, he was fading fast. And it wasn’t like Sil was _dangerous_ dangerous. Not cartoon quicksand dangerous. He just…seemed to have no qualms about taking people by surprise. A snake without a rattle.

Then again, Mal couldn’t say he had any qualms about taking people by surprise, either. What a delightful thing to have in common, he thought sarcastically, as Sil’s hands continued to work mere inches from his neck. And—defying every instinct he allegedly had—Mal closed his eyes and allowed sleep to creep up on him, until it held him in its coils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Character describes their appearance by looking in a mirror" cliché! *ding*


	2. Mutualism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **mutualism** : _n_. a relationship in which both individuals benefit.

_BZZZT. BZZZT. BZZZT._

The noise was so loud, so intrusive, that Mal could feel the vibrations in his teeth. He woke up alarmed and disoriented, wondering where the hell he’d managed to fall asleep that the insects buzzed this loudly. He opened his eyes, then squinted in the light pouring through the enormous, curtainless window.

And then, he remembered.

He tried to sit up, but his neck and back ached—not from spending the night on an unfamiliar couch, which Mal was more than accustomed to, but from the position in which he’d slept. Sil had fallen asleep slumped against the armrest, while Mal had fallen asleep half-sprawled across his legs, the two of them like a pair of toppled dominos.

“Fuck, shit— _fuck_ ,” Mal said, reaching for the twinge in his neck. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him, so much as the fact that it meant letting his guard down for a massage the night before was now rendered completely pointless. Sil wasn’t faring much better, at least. He seethed as he tried to sit up, hissing his own set of curses while he groped for his phone on the coffee table—the source of the buzzing, Mal realized, as the entire surface area of the device vibrated against the glass.

When Sil picked up his phone and saw who was calling, he swore again, sitting up with more urgency. “Be quiet,” he said to Mal, who hadn’t said anything since “fuck, shit, fuck” and hadn’t really planned to, but wanted to now, just out of spite. He did as he was told, though, stretching his back while Sil sat upright, cleared his throat, and answered the call.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, with what Mal had to admit was a pretty impressive “oh, no, I’ve been up for hours” voice. However, when the caller’s reply contained the phrase “just me,” Sil’s posture went slack again.

“Oh, _good_ ,” he said snidely, reclining all the way back down to the armrest. “What do _you_ want, then?”

The caller’s voice was gruff and loud, but it was difficult for Mal to hear what he was saying. Projection, he had no issue with, but enunciation was another matter. Sil rubbed his eyes with one hand as he listened, probably to clear them of sleep as much as to deal with his annoyance. The word “voicemail,” however, cut through his veil of tiredness and right to his eternally offended core.

“Oh, _forgive_ me for not answering every single call on the first ring. I do have a life outside of work, you know.”

“Liar,” Mal said. Sil stretched his leg out to kick him with his heel, then winced as he was beset with pins and needles, from his knee all the way to his toes. Mal snickered quietly as Sil tried keep his leg perfectly still and carry on the conversation through the pain.

“It’s actually _not_ in my job description to be polite to you,” Sil informed the caller, “especially when you wake me up at the ungodly hour of—”

He drew his phone away from his face to check the time, and when he realized it was nowhere near as early as he thought it was, he switched gears. “Anyway, what’s so important that you decided you _must_ rob me of my only day off?”

He really was the perfect martyr, Mal thought, as Sil lay on his sofa like some pale, distraught Victorian figure sprawled across a fainting couch, the burdens and expectations of the world too much for him to possibly bear, yet bear them he did. Still, the more his colleague talked, the more Sil’s expression darkened into contempt instead of just general resentment. “That’s _it_? Tell them to look again. Tell them it’s in—they _do_ know where it is. I trained them myself. They should know their way around the damn filing system by now.”

He listened for a few seconds while the caller blustered on, and then a flash of true anger crossed Sil’s face. “This is neither an emergency _nor_ my responsibility, and if— _no_ , Var, it’s _not_ , even if it _were_ a mistake in data entry. And if it’s a mistake in the _filing_ , then that sounds like a whole lot of _your_ problem. Maybe we should get So on the line after all, tell him how _you_ screwed up his entire Saturday.”

Mal focused very hard on trying to get rid of the twinge in his neck. Social awkwardness usually slid off him with no problem, and he had no investment in Sil’s work life, but this was starting to feel like a discussion that he wasn’t meant to be listening to.

Thankfully, the conversation reached its end, with Sil ceding victory to Var, who sounded a little less victorious and a little more pissed off than he probably would have liked. He might have succeeded in ruining Sil’s morning, but all that meant was that he’d ruined his own, too, setting himself up to deal with a coworker who was even more vindictive and spiteful than usual. That seemed to be Sil’s specialty: if he couldn’t have his cake OR eat it, then he poisoned every slice, just to ensure he didn’t suffer alone.

“Bad news?” Mal asked, fighting back a yawn. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up this groggy. Sil groaned and forced himself to stand up.

“Remember how I said I was on call twenty-four seven?” he replied, stretching his arms over his head. Mal sat up straighter, trying to follow his lead, but Sil didn’t give him much help. He put his phone back on the coffee table, then went down the hall to the bathroom without another glance in Mal’s direction. The door shut, the water came on, and Mal sat on the couch with no idea what to do next.

Last time, he’d managed to sneak out in the middle of the night. But fleeing had been a reasonable response in that situation. Their first fuck had been relatively normal, even fun, but round two, in Sil’s opinion, had apparently necessitated the aid of…implements. Mal had excused himself by pretending to need the bathroom, and then he’d grabbed his bag and bolted without another word.

His whole lifestyle stemmed from his refusal to be tied down, figuratively speaking. He certainly hadn’t been about to let it happen literally.

But it was harder to flee when there was nothing to flee _from_. The last thing Mal remembered from the previous night was letting his head bow surprisingly low, exposing the back of his neck, while Sil helpfully took his wine glass and moved it to the coffee table—where it still sat—and kept trying to loosen his shoulders.

Mal couldn’t justify running from an evening as benign as that, especially when it only scratched the surface of what he’d come here for in the first place. So he got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen to forage. He found a handful of options, most of which he hated: whole grain bread, bran cereal, bland fruit, oatmeal. All breakfast foods, he noticed, which was probably the only meal that Sil had the time or energy to prepare on a regular basis. When Mal checked the fridge, sure enough, it was stocked with boxes of leftover take-out. The freezer had an emergency stash of pre-packaged dinners, for nights when Sil was too busy to worry about things like nutrients or sodium intake. The entire apartment seemed more like a home base than an actual home—a place for Sil to recharge and refuel, rather than a personalized living space.

Mal was still weighing his options, trying to convince himself to at least have a banana or something, when Sil returned. His hair was damp, but combed back neatly, and he was fully dressed for work. He went to retrieve his phone from the living room, and when he saw Mal in the kitchen, he said, “Oh, help yourself,” without a trace of sarcasm.

Mal, who realized now that he was more comfortable taking Sil’s food without asking than accepting it when it was offered, said, “Nah, I’ll go grab something…somewhere…”

“With all that spare money you have?” Sil asked, grabbing a few errant files from around the apartment and slipping them into his briefcase to sort later. “Just stay here; I’ll only be gone a couple hours. Honestly, I _could_ take care of this from home, but our COO has it out for me. Keeps calling me in for pointless problems, which I’m _sure_ he creates on purpose, just to keep me from having any full days off. And if I don’t show up to fix them in person, then he gets to brag to our boss about how _he_ came in on a weekend, and I _didn’t_ —”

“Not so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?” Mal said. Sil laid his hand over his heart, feigning supreme offense.

“Oh! I am a _model_ employee! My only priority is making sure all operations run smoothly. And quite frankly, I resent the implication that I would _ever_ stoop so low as to deliberately inconvenience my coworkers.”

“Why settle for inconveniencing when you can just get ‘em fired, huh?”

“…well,” Sil said, sounding almost humbly flattered, “I do like to invest my time wisely.”

Mal snorted, and Sil grabbed his coat, scarf, and gloves, bundling up in preparation for the cold. “As I was saying,” he went on, “there’s no point in going out. You’re not dressed for winter, and if the doormen swap shifts, you won’t be able to get back inside. It won’t kill you to stay put for a while. Relax. Have some food. Sleep more, if you want.”

Mal glanced at his surroundings. “…all right,” he said hesitantly. “So…couple hours, then?”

“Yes, ideally,” Sil said, patting his pockets to make sure he had his keys, his wallet, and his phone. “Var likes to play the blame game and draw things out as long as possible, but I’d be very surprised if I can’t slink away. I’m as good at talking myself out of situations as I am at talking others into them.”

He said it with so much self-satisfaction, like a preening bird, that Mal couldn’t even call him on it. Sil’s sense of pride may have been warped, but it was by no means undeserved.

So Mal agreed to stay, and once Sil was gone, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, somehow feeling even more awkward now that he was alone. He couldn’t bring himself to eat any of the food, so he continued inspecting the apartment, expanding out from the kitchen. The place was so unlived-in that it felt almost clinical. The few areas that Sil made use of, he clearly indulged in, like the bathroom. But the living room was sparse, with its minimalist furniture and light fixtures. There was no television, no kind of entertainment center, not even a bookshelf.

There was nothing in the way of decorations, either, Mal noticed. Not even a generic-looking piece of artwork, and certainly no photographs. If Sil had any family, he seemed to be as detached from them as Mal was from his, or at least as unsentimental about them. This detail might have been unsettling to some, but Mal found it reassuring. The lack of familial keepsakes or mementos was something he could greatly relate to. Besides, for all his snooping, there was a limit to how much he actually wanted to learn about Sil.

He made his way down the hall, then paused at the door to Sil’s room. He’d been in there once before, although it had been fairly dark, and Mal had had a few drinks beforehand. He didn’t remember much of it. Part of him wanted to nudge the door open and take a look, just to see what he was dealing with. A simple bedroom, as plain and nondescript as the rest of the apartment? Or a veritable medieval torture chamber of definite pain and dubious pleasure?

Mal stood there, pressing his thumb against each of his knuckles in turn, then went back to the living room. Bedrooms were personal territory, and it felt like a boundary he shouldn’t cross, at least not without Sil present to act as a guide. Granted, boundaries weren’t the easiest to figure out in this situation, but at least rooms came with physical thresholds.

He loitered in the living room for a while, wishing the apartment were one room larger, so he wouldn’t be stuck pacing back and forth in the same space like a caged animal. He was just considering digging into a disappointing bowl of bran flakes when he heard another buzzing sound, similar to but less abrasive than the one that had woken him up. He went to his bag by the side of the couch and dug through it until he found his phone.

It was an ancient model, but Mal hadn’t had it for very long. He’d only gotten it at his cousin’s insistence. (“For _safety_ ,” Gra had said. “In case you get attacked by a bear, or something.” “And how will having a phone help me in that situation?” Mal had wanted to know. “Who’s gonna call you? The bear?”)

Still, he’d gone out and bought the cheapest, sturdiest phone he could find, and so far he’d sent exactly one text with it. It was to Gra, and it read, in its entirety: _there, i have a phone now you dick, don’t text me_.

He extracted the device from the bottom of his bag and flipped it open, seeing that he had one missed call. From Sil. Which he knew for a fact, because Sil’s name and number were displayed in blocky, outdated text on his screen. With a sigh, Mal hit the redial button and waited. Sil must have gone into his contacts list (or contact list, at the time) and taken the liberty of entering his number last night, while Mal was either in the shower or asleep. Apparently, personal boundaries weren’t as sacrosanct as Mal thought. He resolved to finally figure out how to put some kind of passcode on his phone as soon as he could.

He also resolved to change his number before he left this godforsaken city.

“Oh, good,” Sil said, barely giving Mal time to realize he’d answered before launching into the conversation. “Thought you might’ve gone back to sleep.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” Mal said. “What’s up? You out of work yet?”

“Yes, _finally_ ,” Sil said. “And I’m starving. Thought I’d stop and get some lunch while I’m out. I can bring something back for you, if you want, or you can come meet me downtown. Up to you.”

Mal looked around. The idea of going to a restaurant with Sil—publicly, in the cold light of day—wasn’t exactly appealing. But the idea of waiting around in Sil’s apartment for him to return, and sharing a meal together _here_ , was somehow worse. “I’ll meet you,” Mal said. “Just tell me how to get there.”

After scribbling down some dodgy directions, Mal grabbed his jacket and headed out. The sun had been shining for hours now, but not enough to thaw the air. Still, Mal refused to get on the subway again, even to escape the cold. There was only a slim chance that it would be faster than walking, anyway. He kept his hands pocketed and his pace brisk, and in just over ten minutes, he arrived at a small but tasteful-looking restaurant, simply called Amaj’s.

It wasn’t busy, but Sil had gone ahead and gotten a table already. He was sitting toward the back of the restaurant, his cheek propped on his fist as he frowned at his phone. Mal had to cross almost the entire floor to reach him, but Sil didn’t notice him until he started to pull a chair away from the table. He glanced at Mal, then the door, then Mal again, smiling. “Sneakier than I remembered.”

“Quite the compliment, coming from you,” Mal said as he took a seat. Sil grinned, but he returned to his phone again, instead of politely putting it away like he did the night before. Mal nodded at it. “Work stuff?”

Sil sighed. “Always.”

“The, uh…what, CFO guy?”

Sil stopped staring at his phone for a moment, only to give Mal a dry look. “What?” Mal asked, and Sil raised his eyebrows.

“I _am_ ‘the CFO guy.’”

“Fine, whatever. CEO, then.”

“ _COO_.”

Mal shrugged, unable or simply unwilling to care about a one-letter difference in title, which seemed to annoy Sil even more. “But yes,” he added, “him.”

Mal picked up a piece of bread from the basket between them, pulling off flakes of dry crust and piling them on his plate. “…so…what’s his deal?”

He wasn’t great at small talk; he never had been. But Sil was an expert conversationalist, and he picked up Mal’s blunt initiation with practiced ease. “His ‘deal’ is that he has it out for me, plain and simple. I went in this morning and sorted out the problem. A mere clerical error. A typo, really. Our interns’ fault, I’m sure. But one misplaced digit throws off the entire form, and then all of our calculations are wrong, and if it doesn’t get caught in time, it, ah…snowballs. I took care of it, of course, but _now_ he’s copying me on all of his emails to our boss, claiming that I misplaced the corrected forms.” He shot Mal a _can you believe this_ look, and Mal stared back, trying to figure out if he could, in fact, believe it.

“… _did_ you?”

“I’ll have you know,” Sil began, in his most indignant tone of voice, “I filed everything exactly where it belongs, meticulously and indisputably. In my personal filing cabinet. To which I carry the only key.”

“…you’re just out to screw over _everyone_ , aren’t you?”

“I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about,” Sil said, with so much conviction that Mal almost believed him. He brushed the crumbs off his hands, shaking his head.

“Well…I don’t envy your coworkers,” he said. “Death by a thousand cuts, working with you.”

“Hmm…budget cuts, usually.”

Mal almost laughed, and Sil looked pleased, at least until his phone dinged again and drew his attention away. He sighed and went back to checking his email while Mal placed his order with the waitress who stopped by their table. Sil didn’t look up, even when she refilled his glass of water. He just kept scanning the screen and typing away.

“He’s still at it?” Mal asked, not exactly eager to converse with Sil over lunch, but also not thrilled about sitting in an awkward silence across the table from him, either. Sil didn’t look up, but he smiled.

“Oh, I’m only responding when the CEO says something now. It gets under Var’s skin, but he can’t bring it up without making himself look petty. As long as we each respond to our boss equally, then eventually he’ll get tired of listening and tell us to sort it out amongst ourselves.”

“…which means…?”

“Which means we’ll be right back where we started.”

“Jesus,” Mal said, slouching in his seat, “this is gonna take all afternoon. Just ask me to kick this guy’s ass already.”

Sil didn’t look up from his phone, but he did stop scrolling, and his eyes stopped moving over the text. After a moment, Mal realized he was actually imagining that scenario playing out. Part of him was a little flattered that that was apparently something worth imagining, but most of him recoiled at the idea. He was pretty sure he could handle one of Sil’s office drone colleagues, but still. No matter how much physical endurance was required for hiking and hunting and climbing trees and setting up camp, it never translated well to a legitimate fight. Mal had learned that the hard way, decades ago.

Still. It was a flattering thought.

Their meals arrived shortly, and it only took a few more minutes for Sil to receive the “for the love of god, both of you start acting like the chief officers I’m paying you to be and leave me the hell alone already” email. He finally put his phone away and started in on his salad, while Mal was already well into his steak tips. The food was decent, and more importantly, it spared them the pressure of making conversation for a while. Mal scarfed down his meal in peace, and once he finished his water, Sil nodded at his empty plate and said, “Good?”

“Yeah,” Mal said. Sil smiled wryly.

“Better than protein bars, I bet.”

Mal felt a flash of defensiveness—mostly because Sil was right. Mal’s diet was usually as organic as it could get, but his access to fresh protein depended on the hunting and fishing laws of whatever state he happened to be living in at the time. And he’d spent the past week or so traveling through the eastern half of the country, zipping through the smaller states too fast to procure his own food. He’d been surviving on travel-friendly snacks—a lot of dried fruit and mixed nuts—and at this point, a plate of overpriced, over-marinated steak tips was a godsend.

“How about you?” he asked, gesturing at what remained of Sil’s salad. Sil accepted the check from the waitress and shrugged as she started clearing the table.

“Too dry,” he said, not bothering to wait until she was gone. “Barely any dressing. They never seem to get it right.”

“You could’ve asked for more.”

“But then they put on too _much_.”

“So get it on the side,” Mal said, wondering why he, of all people, was coaching Sil in proper restaurant etiquette. Sil sighed.

“Doesn’t help—I’m bound to use whatever amount they give me. And it’s so _rich_ , and the _calories_ —”

“What _is_ it with you?” Mal said. “I mean, _you_ chose the restaurant. You complain when there’s not enough dressing. You’d complain if there was too much. You’d complain if they gave _you_ the dressing, and you got to portion it out yourself. What do you _want_?”

Sil stared at him. “To complain,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Mal stared back, then shook his head in disbelief, both at Sil for his skewed priorities, and at himself for being in any way surprised by them.

“All right,” he said, almost amused. “Fair enough.”

Sil signed the check, they grabbed their coats, and soon they were outside again. The wind was crisp, but the sun was warmer now, and they spent a few minutes standing on the sidewalk, letting their lunch settle. Only now did it occur to Mal just how much he’d let his guard down, because what the hell were they supposed to do next? They could return to Sil’s place, but something about going back there while the sun was still up was just not a viable option. And Mal knew why, loathe as he was to admit it—even to himself.

It was simple. Stupidly, embarrassingly simple. Sil’s apartment was fantastic. It had the nicest shower Mal had ever seen, and a couch that was more comfortable than half the beds he’d ever slept in, and he was determined to negotiate himself into at least one more night there. And if they got the sex out of the way too early, then it would become clear that Mal’s only reason for continuing to spend the night was his _wanting_ to spend the night. And no amount of explaining how pragmatic and cost-efficient it was for him would be enough to wipe the smug look off Sil’s face once he realized that he was able to tempt Mal into his lifestyle in any way whatsoever.

Unfortunately, Mal had no idea what else to do. He wasn’t even sure what the protocol was here, socially speaking. They’d shared a meal—now what? Did they have to do other things together? Could Sil go back to his apartment, and Mal explore the city on his own for a while, and then reconvene at a later time? Sil did have his number now, Mal reminded himself; it wasn’t like they’d lose track of each other.

“Well,” Sil said, as if reading his thoughts, “what now?”

Mal shrugged. “I have no plans for the rest of the day,” Sil went on, which Mal sincerely doubted. If there was one thing Sil always had, it was plans. “I could show you around the city a bit. You left so quickly last time—surely you didn’t get a chance to see much of it.”

For what felt like the thousandth time, Mal declined to comment on that. He was a seasoned hunter, after all—he knew bait when he saw it. He pulled his jacket a little tighter around him and shrugged again. “Let’s just walk, then. And you can let me know if there’s anything worthwhile to do around here.”

Sil scoffed as they started making their way down the sidewalk. “‘Anything worthwhile,’ he asks. A _plethora_.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“Swan boats.”

“Fuck off.”

“Freedom Trail?”

“No.”

“Faneuil Hall?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Mmm…probably wouldn’t enjoy it, anyway. Several art museums, if you’re into that.”

Mal made an unimpressed face.

“A show, then?”

“What, like theater?” Mal asked, accidentally scuffing his foot on the sidewalk, then scuffing the other one to make it even. “Sitting in a dark room, surrounded by strangers, watching other strangers pretend to be fictional strangers?”

Sil sighed. “What about the aquarium? You like nature…things,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “The penguins are a popular exhibit.”

“What am I, five years old?”

“There’s a good oyster bar near here.”

“You _just_ ate. How much food do you need?”

“Whale watch?”

“It’s freezing out.”

“Candlepin bowling?”

Mal finally looked at Sil, staring him down for a few seconds while they waited to cross the street. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Ooh, look how sharp you are.”

Mal rolled his eyes, following the crowd forward as the DON’T WALK signal flashed. “Got any serious suggestions, then?”

“Not really. Just keep walking and see where we end up?”

“Fine by me.”

Their path took them to the Common, which Mal found to be a pathetic and embarrassing attempt to keep some kind of natural environment alive in the middle of the city. The Public Gardens were a bit better, but not by much. At least there were no swans in sight. Mal had tangled with all kinds of animals over the years, but swans were in a wholly different category of aggression and sheer tenacity, on par with wild turkeys and Canada geese. Mal was tough, but he was no fool, and he hadn’t made it this far in life by picking fights with the cassowaries of New England.

When they exhausted their options in the few tree-lined areas of the city, they continued their walk back among the restaurants and storefronts. The sun would be going down soon, at least, which Mal was surprisingly relieved about. He was looking forward to spending the night in a nice, temperature-controlled environment, and the sooner he could stop pretending to be interested in this city, the better.

Still, the evening came faster than he anticipated. Even Sil seemed caught off guard when the wind picked up. It groaned against buildings and rattled windows, revealing just how ill-fitting they were in their frames. Mal turned his collar up as much as he could, but the tops of his ears were getting chafed. Sil tried to lead them out of the cold as quickly as he could, and he headed down the stairs of the nearest Green Line station. Mal hesitated, wondering if Sil’s apartment was close enough to jog to, but another vicious gust of wind convinced him that going in couldn’t be worse than staying out on the sidewalk, so in he went.

He almost tripped down the stairs; the safety strip that had once been bolted to the edge of the step was now hanging off it like an old band-aid, becoming more of an ironic hindrance than a help. The smell was as bad as he remembered, and he could hear dripping from at least three nearby sources—two plumbing-related, and one human-related, from a man standing in a far corner who Mal desperately tried to ignore—but at least it was warm. He rubbed the feeling back into his hands and flapped his jacket a couple times, as if he were trying to shake the cold off it.

“What’s the point of all these promotions if you don’t have a company car by now?” Mal snapped.

“I’ll get one when they come with chauffeurs,” Sil shot back. “You couldn’t _pay_ me to drive in this city.”

Mal couldn’t argue with that, much as he wanted to. He kept rubbing his hands and stamping his feet to keep the blood circulating, while Sil simply drew in on himself, nose in his scarf, hands in his pockets, shoulders forward, and shivering intermittently.

Their train arrived with a metallic shriek and a burning smell, and Sil and Mal boarded along with a few other passengers, including the man who had been loitering in the corner of the platform. Mal had been watching him over Sil’s head. He was naturally suspicious of everyone, especially people who used subway stations as toilets and only seemed to decide to get on the train at the last minute.

Still, he didn’t say anything. Probably a homeless man with mental health problems, or an opioid addiction, or both. Possibly just a random drunk. More sad than dangerous, in the grand scheme of things. Not that it was any of Mal’s business. The man was at one end of the car, and Mal and Sil were at the other—between two cars, Mal realized, as the train took off and the circular part of the floor that he was standing on started to swivel.

Mal had to hold onto a pole for balance, but he kept an eye on the man’s reflection in the dingy window. He wasn’t causing anything more than a verbal disturbance so far. His occasional ranting didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular, and so no one in particular took it upon themselves to respond. Probably the best way to handle it, Mal figured. A couple of passengers got up without a word and stood across the train. The rest kept their earbuds in or stayed fixed on their phones. Sil was behaving more or less the same. He was checking his email again, scowling either because he had received another one from the office, or because he hadn’t. Annoying him with updates seemed to be just as grievous an offense as cutting him out of the loop.

With each stop, the train got a little more crowded. Soon there was a small cluster of people gradually pushing their way toward where Mal and Sil were standing, trying to filter through to the other car once they realized what kind of person they were sharing the train with. Mal let go of the pole to hold the ceiling handle instead, keeping his arm in front of Sil like a barrier.

The people started to push past more insistently, jostling Mal no matter how much he tried to squeeze against the wall. He didn’t like the idea of being whisked away by a crowd, especially in such a confined space, but there was some kind of herd mentality forming, and it was hard to resist. He was just about to suggest to Sil that they move to the next car, too, when someone behind him said, “Oh, fuck—”

Mal turned his head instinctively, and even Sil looked up. He craned his neck, trying to see past Mal’s arm, just as someone else said, “Shit, he’s got a knife, he’s got a knife.”

Mal turned fully, putting Sil behind him as the entire crowd became alive. They were a tight pack now, everyone pressed together in a shared desire to get at least an arm’s length away from the man. Mal drew himself up to his full height to see over them and get a better look at the situation.

The man was drunk—that much was clear. He was unsteady on his feet, but somehow hadn’t fallen, even with the rickety tin-can-on-wheels motion of the train. In his right hand was a knife, and while he wasn’t threatening anyone with it yet, it was only a matter of time before he hurt someone, intentionally or not.

“Think I don’t know? Huh?!” he said, senselessly, but with feeling, agitated by the crowd’s reaction to him. “Think I dunno what you’re saying? All the girls like you, talking about me behind my back— _laughing_ —”

He shoved a woman with his free hand, sending her stumbling into the rest of the crowd. Mal caught her by her upper arms, more to redirect her out of his way than anything else. There were a couple of young guys standing behind the man, keeping their distance but also clearly trying to coordinate some kind of takedown, and Mal’s first thought was to let them. If anyone was going to try to be a hero, Mal would rather it be someone young and spry, who would bounce back from an injury in a fraction of the time it would likely take him.

But Mal had always been leery of relying on strangers, and he didn’t exactly have faith in what looked like two liberal arts undergrads to know how to handle themselves in a fight. Besides, everyone had certain hard rules for how they wanted to go out, and Mal’s ideal end did _not_ involve standing around like a moron, waiting to get stabbed by a public urinator who couldn’t hold his liquor on the fucking Green Line. Dying in Boston was bad enough. Dying _underneath_ it was out of the question.

So Mal stepped forward, ready to involve himself in a situation he would have otherwise been perfectly happy to ignore.

When the man saw Mal approach, he almost seemed to sober up for a moment and decide that this wasn’t a fight he wanted to go through with. Then another surge of confidence came to him, and he swung his fist in a clumsy attempt at a punch, as if he’d forgotten he was even holding a knife. The blade cut through empty air, but it came a lot closer to Mal than he would have liked, forcing him back a few inches.

His opponent was uncoordinated, and all the more dangerous because of it. Mal was used to gauging signs of danger by studying local wildlife, or monitoring the sky for inclement weather, but this kind of erratic human behavior set him on edge like nothing else. He couldn’t predict the movements of a man who didn’t know what he himself was going to do next.

Luckily—if foolishly—one of the young students finally saw his chance to take action. He grabbed the man’s arm, trying unsuccessfully to twist it behind his back. For a moment, the man was too confused to retaliate, allowing the second student to grab his other arm.

Mal didn’t hesitate. He also didn’t manage to land the punch he tried to throw. The train careened around a bend in the tunnel, ruining his aim, and as Mal regained his balance, he knew he was about to run out of opportunities. One of the students had lost his footing, and the drunk was struggling against the other. Before he could wind up for another half-punch, half-stab, Mal would have to beat him to it.

A few things happened at the same time. The man freed himself and raised his arm. The train decelerated as it pulled into the station. And Mal threw what he hoped would be a very sharp, solid punch.

It was more solid than he expected. The train’s momentum jerked the man forward before toppling him over, and Mal hit him not in the face, where he’d stupidly been aiming, but—through sheer serendipity—in the throat. The man choked and dropped the knife immediately, and then he and Mal staggered as the train shrieked to a full stop. The man hit the floor while Mal stumbled back into the crowd, where a few other people reached out to steady him. Someone quickly snatched up the knife, wrapping it in a thick scarf for safety, and the doors opened with a shudder of relief to let the passengers-turned-captives out onto the platform.

A few people pulled the drunk to his feet and brought him off the train, while others went to find a security officer. One of the men who’d caught Mal helped him upright and gave him a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Jesus, man, you got fuckin’ lucky there. You good?”

Mal nodded blankly. It took him a few seconds to realize that he’d been asked a question, and a few more seconds to get his head together and actually respond like a human being. “Yeah,” he said, then curled and flexed his punching hand to make sure he wasn’t lying. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The man nodded, giving him another pat on the shoulder as if to congratulate him on a job well done, which Mal might have found patronizing if he were in a more normal frame of mind. As the crowd filtered out around him, Mal scanned the remaining faces on the train, and his gaze came to rest on Sil. He was still standing where Mal left him, on that stupid rotating section of the floor, holding onto one of the bars. His phone was away, though, and he was looking straight at Mal.

Mal started shaking, just a little. Tiny tremors flickered up and down his arm, and he remembered, now that it was over, that this was always the best part of a fight. It was never the fights themselves, but the aftershocks like this—the leftover adrenaline, the trembling limb, the life rattle—that delighted him. Mal never went into a fight to be a hero. He never even tried to win. He only tried not to lose. And when it was his physical safety on the line, not losing was all the reward he needed. His entire body knew it, too.

Sil noticed the trembling, faint as it was, and finally made his way over. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Mal said, shrugging to straighten out his jacket. He nodded at the open doors. “We close enough to walk?”

Sil nodded, and they disembarked, entrusting the drunk to more capable hands than theirs. One of the college students caught Mal’s eye and gave him the “hey, we really took care of that back there, good work” nod, which Mal returned out of reflex. Then he and Sil went up the dilapidated stairs, back into the fresh air and the cold evening.

The wind had eased up, but it was still biting enough to drive most people indoors or into taxis. The sidewalk was clear, at least, with no other pedestrians obstructing the path back to Sil’s warm, dry apartment. It was only a few blocks away, and if they kept up the pace, they could get there before the chill really started to set in.

They made it about three quarters of the way before Sil broke. He grabbed the front of Mal’s jacket and started dragging him off the sidewalk, into an alley. Mal was still lingering somewhere between fight or flight, and the second Sil put his hands on him, his whole body jolted in panic. It was fleeting, just a brief, uncalculated reaction, but it shattered whatever composure either one of them had left.

Sil backed himself up to the wall, tugging on Mal’s jacket as he leaned up to kiss him. It took Mal a second to catch up, but he came back to reality quickly enough. He moved forward, so close already that he could barely take a step before he had Sil pinned entirely against the wall.

Mal kissed him hungrily and messily, his hands going everywhere, obeying each impulse as soon as it arose. He grabbed Sil’s hips, a little too tight, then let go and moved to his waist, and then all the way up to his face, unable to decide where to stay, or if he even wanted to stay in one place at all.

Sil was more decisive with his touch, dragging both hands down Mal’s chest, then around to his back to pull him closer. He reached under his jacket, trying to seek shelter from the cold air. It gusted into the alley, burning Sil’s ear and the side of his face. He had his scarf, at least, but it wasn’t very effective when Mal was pulling it down so he could press his mouth to Sil’s neck.

Sil wanted to relax and enjoy it, but between the winter wind on one side, and Mal’s stubble on the other, he felt like he was being exfoliated with sandpaper. The state of Mal’s facial hair, he’d address later, at a more convenient time. For now, the obvious solution.

“All right,” Sil said, patiently but pointedly, “come on. We’re almost there.”

Mal didn’t respond, still ferociously at work on Sil’s neck. He did shiver, though, and it was definitely a cold shiver more than an adrenaline-fueled one. “It’s below freezing, with the wind,” Sil tried again. Once more, Mal said nothing, but he raised his arm and pressed it against the wall above Sil’s head, both blocking the wind from his face and caging him in.

That was good, Sil thought, distracted for a moment by how effortlessly Mal managed to reach above him. It was exactly the clichéd, dominating kind of body language Sil had been waiting for, but there was no reason Mal couldn’t pull that same move in the nice, warm, windless indoors. Sil supposed he had only himself to blame, for behaving impulsively with an already impulsive person.

“Inside,” he said, his jaw stiff as he tried to keep his teeth from chattering. “Then, we pick up where we left off. Deal?”

Mal paused with his face buried in Sil’s neck and scarf. He sighed, his breath delightfully warm, then lifted his head and carelessly tugged the scarf back into place. Sil took a few extra seconds to straighten it out and cool off a little, but the cold was more brutal than bracing at this point, and it didn’t take long for them to return to the sidewalk and finish the home stretch to Sil’s apartment.

They got inside quickly and managed to get an elevator to themselves. It was one with a sturdy railing around the edge, which Mal didn’t notice until he tried to pin Sil to the wall again and knocked his hip against it instead. Sil guided them away from it with a noise of disapproval, though he didn’t let Mal stop what he was doing. His hands went all over as they kissed, trying to pull Mal as close as possible.

Mal, in contrast, was holding Sil very tightly, but very carefully, keeping his hands on the sides of his waist. He had always liked to maintain contact by pinning his partners against things, rather than holding them close. At the moment, he felt like he was struggling with the impulse to both pull Sil toward him and push him away.

They separated just before Sil’s floor, keeping count of the quiet _dings_ on the elevator’s display. Mal followed Sil down the hallway once the doors opened, waiting impatiently behind him while he searched for the right key. He was acting outright possessive now, keeping his hand on Sil’s back, and when Sil finally unlocked the door, Mal practically pushed him through. Sil wanted to complain about being manhandled, his reflex to take offense at everything kicking in, but Mal was already nudging the door closed with his shoulder, and in seconds they were on each other again.

Sil unzipped Mal’s jacket, while Mal all but tore his scarf off. He took Sil’s neck in his hand, his fingers curling behind it and his thumb pushing up beneath Sil’s chin as he bent down, kissing and tonguing at his throat. Sil tried not to let it distract him from getting the rest of their winter clothes out of the way, but there was only so much he could do while Mal was holding onto him. He unbuttoned his own coat and took off his gloves, then tapped Mal’s wrist to get his attention. It only took Mal a second to get the hint, and soon his gloves were off, his jacket was tossed onto the sofa, and Sil was back in his grasp.

It was the first time they’d touched and been able to really feel each other since Mal had arrived—more than just a shoulder massage, or Mal falling asleep on Sil’s legs. They spent a minute reacquainting themselves, each feeling his opposite in the other’s body. Sil wasn’t fat, but he was soft, and flabby in certain places, a product of his mostly sedentary lifestyle.

Mal, on the other hand, was as tense as he’d been the night before. He was like a tree that had spent its entire life growing against the wind, and every place Sil put his hands felt as if it were made of coiled springs and corded leather. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all, but there was no yield in Mal’s body, and it was difficult for Sil to tell if his touch was having much of an effect. To test it, he slid his hands under Mal’s shirt, reaching up behind his back and trailing his fingertips along his skin.

Mal jolted again, a full flinch this time. He broke away from Sil and drew in a seething breath, quickly taking his cold hands out of his shirt and bringing them back to the front. He was about to reposition them—not picky about where they’d go, as long as it wasn’t on his bare skin—then paused when he got a better look at Sil’s fingertips.

The weather hadn’t exactly done wonders for Mal’s body; it made his joints stiff and achey, and he’d had to roll his wrists a few times until he heard them crack. But Sil’s fingers looked downright sallow, as if they hadn’t had any blood flow at all since the subway station.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Mal murmured, a statement of general disbelief more than an actual question. Sil shrugged.

“Heart condition,” he said, while Mal started rolling his sleeves up for him. “Poor circulation, I guess…”

He trailed off, distracted by the way Mal was handling him. He rubbed Sil’s forearms as if he were trying to manually draw the blood and warmth all the way back up to his fingertips. After a few seconds of that, he cupped his hands around Sil’s, brought them to his mouth, and exhaled, rubbing them some more between breaths.

There was no tenderness in it—he moved briskly, goal-oriented at all times. It felt almost procedural, yet somehow increased the sense of intimacy tenfold. Now that they were indoors, Mal was practically overflowing with warmth, and here he was, choosing to pass some of that warmth over to Sil, making it his own.

He had nice hands, Sil realized, watching them closely. They felt clever in a way that the rest of Mal usually didn’t, as if they knew exactly what they were doing, executing every movement perfectly and with clear intent. Mal didn’t have a soft touch, but when it came to pure survival techniques like this, Sil felt as if he were quite literally in expert hands.

Mal rubbed his wrists and arms, the pads of his fingers feeling their way down pale skin and carpal bones and tendons, and Sil shivered. He _was_ in expert hands, but those hands could do a lot more than warm and tend and care. If you were the wrong kind of prey, they could strike, and catch, and break.

When Mal exhaled again, it was harsher, and more impatient. He seemed to realize how much time he was spending on this little task. He took Sil’s hand and tested it against the bare skin of his own arm. After a moment, he nodded, said, “Better,” and released Sil’s hands, leaning down to kiss him again.

Sil’s fingers itched, prickling as the blood seeped back into them, but he savored the feeling as long as he could. They made out for a few more minutes, trying to regain the momentum and mood that Mal had briefly thrown off. Finally, in between kissing Sil, Mal managed to say, “Where am I taking you?”

His voice was so low, rough and heavy, that Sil was tempted to pretend he somehow didn’t hear him, just to make him ask again. Instead, he started pushing him back toward the hall, and Mal went eagerly, but carefully, trying not to walk into anything.

When they reached Sil’s room, Mal bumped against the doorjamb, and he paused. Beneath his feet lay the line he didn’t cross earlier. Sil couldn’t have known that, of course, but he picked up on Mal’s response, like hesitation mixed with anticipation. He let Mal hover in that twilight zone of emotion for just a moment, then slid his hands down Mal’s chest to his abdomen, giving him a small shove over the threshold.

Mal stepped backward into the room, a little uneasy about entering a new location without the chance to scope it out. Sil managed to get out of his shoes before they reached the bed, but Mal’s boots required a bit more work. He was diligent about footwear, and they were laced tightly up to around mid-calf. He sat on the edge of the mattress and untied them as quickly as he could, and as soon as they were loose enough to slide off, he let them tumble to the floor. Sil was ready, placing a hand on his shoulder and guiding him the rest of the way onto the bed.

Mal moved up to the pillows and lay down on his side, drawing Sil against him and kissing him again. He held still, basking in that moment: lying on a clean, warm bed large enough for all six-foot-three-inches of him to stretch out comfortably, with another person’s body pressed along his own.

He deepened the kiss before breaking it, leaning over Sil until he cooperatively turned onto his back. Mal tried to take off his tie, craving more skin contact than he’d been able to get so far, and he was forced to realize now, of all moments, that he had never once tied or untied a tie in his life. He’d never even _held_ a tie, as far as he could remember. He was good with knots, generally, but here, his hands faltered.

Sil picked up on his dilemma fast, but he didn’t offer to help, not even for the sake of speeding things along. It was worth it, just to watch Mal flounder with such a simple, mundane task. Finally, Mal gave up and moved on to his shirt instead. Its small, plastic buttons were annoying, but simpler than the tie, which Sil proceeded to remove with a smug amount of ease. He held an end of it in each hand and looped it behind Mal’s neck to pull him down for another kiss, but Mal slipped out and snatched the tie from Sil’s hand, tossing it to the floor.

“Don’t get cute,” he said. Sil grinned and sat up to finish getting out of his shirt, which quickly joined the general vicinity of the tie. He still wore an undershirt, but Mal’s hands and mouth sought out any exposed skin they could find. He had to pause when his hair fell in his eyes; he hadn’t cut it in a while, and it was just long enough to be a nuisance. He shoved it back and resumed his tactile exploration, then sighed in frustration when the hair fell in his face a second time. Before he could fix it, Sil reached up with both hands, and leading with the edge of his fingernails, he raked Mal’s hair back into place.

Mal reacted faster than he could process it. One second he was kissing Sil, and the next he was leaning away from him, into his touch, seeking his hand instead of his mouth. He took a deep, nearly silent breath, his scalp tingling, his face warming in Sil’s palm. After all of their rough, aggressive contact so far, this was nothing but pure, gentle pleasure, and Mal’s brain registered it as if it were a brand new sensation.

He opened his eyes slowly, wondering when he’d closed them. Sil lay beneath him, studying his reaction with the most careful scrutiny. Mal stared back, feeling pinned by his gaze. He was familiar with the concept of being undressed by someone’s eyes, but Sil’s look went so deep, it felt more like being vivisected. Just another reminder that Mal couldn’t have one simple, unguarded human reaction without it being picked apart and analyzed.

Sil pressed his hand against Mal’s face, grazing his fingertips gently across his skin. He started to sit up, leaning against the pillows to get closer to Mal’s level.

Mal planted a hand on his chest and pushed him back down. He pulled Sil’s undershirt over his head and removed his own top layers, stripping them off in one fell swoop thanks to a generous amount of static electricity. Sil stared at him as he tossed his clothes aside to join Sil’s on the floor, then he reached up, unable to resist dragging his fingernails slowly down Mal’s front, then around and up his back.

Mal shuddered and let Sil pull him back down, and he tried not to react too noticeably when Sil touched his face this time. Sil held him with both hands, drawing him into the kiss, then moved back, resting one hand on his shoulder and keeping the other against his cheek. He looked closely at him, and Mal looked back, unable to figure out if Sil was admiring him, or just assessing him, taking note of all the details.

His thumb strayed toward Mal’s eye, tracing the dark circle beneath it. Mal didn’t spend a lot of time in front of mirrors, but he knew those circles were a little deeper and darker these days. Nothing drastic, but certainly noticeable. Sil brushed his thumb across Mal’s cheek, and when Mal leaned into his touch again, he quietly said, “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

And there it was: the verbal acupuncturist had struck again, tapping his needle with soft precision right into Mal’s psychological pressure point. Mal didn’t bother responding. As he went back to laying his mouth down Sil’s front, Sil let his fingers drift idly through Mal’s hair. “You should take better care of yourself,” he remarked. “How much sleep have you been getting lately?”

“Shut up,” Mal murmured against his skin. Sil, of course, did nothing of the sort.

“It’s not healthy, the way you live,” he said as Mal brought his hands slowly down his sides. “Too much stress. Just imagine what a week of sleeping on a proper mattress would do for you. Eating proper meals. Taking proper showers. Unpacking your bag for once—”

“ _Sil_ ,” Mal said, holding his waist a little more tightly. “Stop _talking_.”

Sil did stop talking, but Mal didn’t trust it for a second. Sil deciding to go silent was like the killer in a slasher movie deciding to stop making phone calls. Mal looked up at him, and for fuck’s sake, he was _smiling_ , the smug bastard. “Can’t,” Sil said, far too innocently. “Don’t know how.”

Mal was almost annoyed enough to say something stupidly predictable, like, “Then allow me.” But he didn’t. He rolled his eyes and scooted up to the head of the bed again, kissing Sil’s neck so he wouldn’t have to look at him and reaching between them for his belt.

He lasted as long as he could like this—pulling off clothes and touching and grabbing and having his skin scratched up by Sil—until he finally said, “Turn over.” He’d meant to just say it quietly, but his voice came out hoarse and needy. He didn’t even have the mental capacity to be embarrassed by it, though he was sure that would change in the morning, when his head was clear again. Sil was more than happy to comply, and before long Mal was looming over him. There was no finesse from either of them, just an instinctive, frantic pursuit of gratification, catharsis, release, and whatever else they were trying to get out of this encounter.

Afterward, Mal lay on his back and rested his forearm over his eyes, trying to remain in this state a while longer, where both of them were too worn out and blitzed with pleasure to speak. He could pretend it was anyone laying beside him. Some anonymous person whose name he never bothered to learn. Anything to keep the endorphins flowing, Mal thought, as he inhaled deeply and let it out slowly.

There was a change in pressure on the mattress, a shift of sheets, and then Sil’s voice, still a little breathless, saying, “Satisfied?”

Mal pressed his arm harder against his eyes. He wouldn’t have breathed at all, if he’d known it was going to start the talking portion of this already. He deserved more silence. “Yeah,” he said, hoping that a terse answer would get the point across.

“Good,” Sil went on, “because they’ve done studies, you know—the health benefits of human contact on a regular basis. Not just contact, either, but general socializing. And sleeping habits, too. I don’t know how you tend to sleep out there, but judging by the state of your face—no offense—I highly doubt you’re getting enough of it.”

“So why don’t you shut up and _let_ me, then?” Mal asked, rubbing his face with both hands. “I’ve fucking earned it.”

Sil hummed his assent and moved closer, propping himself up on his elbow so he was the one looming over Mal, which Mal absolutely did not like. The fingertips grazing his chest, however, he simply didn’t want to admit he liked. He gave Sil an obligatory little shove, just to keep up appearances, but Sil came right back. He seemed tired, too; his movements were lazy as he fluffed up Mal’s chest hair, occasionally tracing invisible and unknown sigils on his skin. But he didn’t demand anything of Mal, and didn’t even seem to expect anything of him, except to lie there and enjoy himself.

Mal wasn’t sure if he could. Already, he was starting to think about exit strategies, how early he’d need to get up tomorrow to beat Sil to the shower, and when to make his escape, and how much food he could reasonably take with him before he felt like an irredeemable mooch. And then Sil’s fingertips went up his shoulder and neck, and Mal’s eyes shut without his permission. He opened them partway, just for the sheer pleasure of closing them again when Sil combed through his hair, over and over, shifting it into and out of place.

This was a test. Mal could feel it. It was an endurance test, like all forms of temptation were. As long as he didn’t move, didn’t show that Sil’s touch was having any effect on him, he would pass. He’d have withstood the horrible pleasure and proved that he could enter Sil’s domain, step into his lair willingly, and come out unchanged, uncompromised, as long as he didn’t give in.

…but what did that really earn him? He’d done a good deed today, and he deserved his indulgence, even if it meant letting Sil have one, too. So, summoning up what little strength he had left, Mal scooted a few inches to the side, closer to Sil, and settled down. Sil continued to touch him and play with his hair, potentially casting some kind of slow-acting hex on him like the pasty, middle-aged Svengali he was, and Mal let him, his body finally succumbing to rest and relaxation while his consciousness fled to safety in the neutral realm of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *writes Mal flinching ONE time*  
> my brain, with zero hesitation: Flinchyyy!
> 
> (The interns are named Grue and Nak, by the way.)


	3. Kleptoparasitism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **kleptoparasitism** : _n_. a relationship in which one individual steals food or resources that were gathered, caught, or otherwise prepared by another.

The next morning, Mal woke up not groggily, but not suddenly, either. The room was dim, with only a fraction of the light from the living room window reaching down the hallway. It was almost peaceful.

A large part of that was due to the rest of the bed being empty. Mal lay still and listened carefully, but he couldn’t hear any running water or sounds from the kitchen. He sank back against the pillow and massaged his eyes, trying to tone down his perpetual wariness. It wasn’t often he got to wake up at a leisurely pace, and he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity, not knowing when he’d have it again.

After a few minutes of lying there, on the plush but firm mattress, ensconced in smooth, warm sheets, Mal started to worry that he was simply going to fall back asleep. He forced himself to get up, rummaged around for his pants, hit the bathroom, and then scoped out the rest of the apartment.

Empty, just as he’d thought—and hoped. He found his jacket where he’d left it the night before, thrown haphazardly over the arm of the couch, and he took his phone out of the pocket. No messages. He did recall Sil saying yesterday afternoon—among a litany of other complaints—that he usually went into work for a few hours on Sundays. Nine to noon, or something like that. Mal looked at his phone again to check the time.

Ten o’ clock. He put his phone away, disgusted by how long he’d slept. He tried to cut himself some slack, though. Yesterday had been…a lot. Mal flexed his hand at his side, making a fist and then fanning his fingers. No pain. He stretched his back—fine, too. All seemed well.

Two hours, he thought. Plenty of time to clean himself up, gather his things, and get a head start on his escape. If he really hustled, he could be out of the state before Sil even realized he’d left.

Mal stood in the living room for another minute, until the floor started to feel cold on his bare feet, and then he dug some clean clothes out of his bag, went to the bathroom, and took another long, indulgent shower. As he lathered up with that off-putting body wash—realizing now that there was a bitter undercurrent of licorice among the peppermint—he derived some petty pleasure from the fact that he was running up Sil’s hot water bill, if only by a marginal amount. Even the slightest inconvenience was worth it.

He took his time at the sink, scrubbing his face and finally giving it a long overdue shave. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he went to the kitchen afterward and poured himself a glass of orange juice, just for a bit of energy. While he was at it, he found a spare outlet near the couch and plugged his phone in. The thing could really hold a charge, but he figured he might as well make use of the free electricity while he had access to it. With that taken care of, Mal took his drink across the room and sat in a chair by the window, unwinding as much as he could while he gazed out at the city.

The sight was captivating—all the cars whooshing over the bridge, the flux of airplanes departing and arriving at Logan in the distance. A tall oblong building, its exterior so shiny and reflective that it seemed to melt right into the sky. Tiny white triangles sailing down the river like paper boats. Mal knew he wouldn’t have felt a shred of peace if he were down there himself, but from this distance, and this height, the constant activity was both stimulating and soothing. He stared out the window like a cat, patient and composed and utterly engrossed in the goings-on of the world below him.

Mal had no idea how long he sat there, but it was long enough for him to be caught off guard when he heard a set of keys turning in the door. He was more surprised that he hadn’t heard the footsteps leading up to it. Sil wasn’t exactly known for his stealth.

But Mal was. He stayed right where he sat, a dark-dressed man against the bright, sunny backdrop of the floor-length window, and it still took Sil a couple minutes to notice him. He shut the door softly and proceeded to the kitchen with a paper bag and his briefcase, laying the latter down on the counter instead of tossing it like he normally would. It was as if he were actively trying to be quiet, possibly assuming that Mal was still asleep.

His oddly considerate behavior was proved pointless when he finally looked up and saw Mal sitting on the other side of the room, watching him. He casually finished the last of his orange juice while Sil made a pathetic attempt to pretend he wasn’t startled by the sight of him. “Guess I can stop sneaking around, then,” he said, trying to laugh off his mild fright.

“You were doing so well, too,” Mal said, getting up from the chair to take his glass back to the kitchen. He passed it over the counter to Sil, who simply rinsed it out and left it in the sink for now.

“Well, I’ve been practicing all morning, walking on eggshells after yesterday’s little mishap.”

“Yeah?” Mal said, leaning against the counter and trying to see into the paper bag. “Your friend still causing problems?”

“Who?”

“You know, Mr…CCO?”

“Ah, it’s…” Sil paused, then waved his hand. “Close enough. And no, thankfully. He actually gets full days off once in a while, unlike _some_ of us.”

Mal hooked his finger over the top of the bag and pulled it open, peering down at a selection of sandwiches while Sil was busy at the fridge. “Must make you look better, though. Being there all the time.”

“One would think,” Sil said, taking out a container of pre-sliced fruit. “If our CEO bothered to show up on weekends, then yes, it would be worth it to go in. But he doesn’t care about who’s there when things are going well—only when things are going wrong. And since I, the most loyal, hardworking employee, am _always_ there, I’m statistically the most likely to take the blame. Yet I get none of the credit for setting things right.”

“Poor you,” Mal said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yes, well. It’s my cross to bear.”

“And with such humility.”

Sil humored him with an offended look, then gestured to the bag. “Please, help yourself. I bought a variety; hopefully there’s something in there you’ll like.”

“I can eat anything,” Mal said, which was a half-truth. In a survival situation, he was willing and able to choke down just about anything to keep himself going. But once he was presented with options, people were often surprised to learn just how picky he could be.

Sil removed a sandwich for himself, arranging half of it on a plate with some diced cantaloupe and wrapping the rest up to put in the fridge. He nudged the bag closer to Mal, who shook his head. “I’m good.”

Sil paused. “Did you have breakfast?”

Mal nodded at the glass in the sink. Sil glanced at it, then at Mal again, and pushed the bag closer to him. “Go on. Eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” Mal replied. Sil gave him a skeptical look.

“So, you’re just not going to eat? Until…?”

“Until I’m hungry.”

Sil rolled his eyes, picking up his lunch and carrying it to the dining table. “You are not a healthy man, Mal,” he said, as Mal sat down across from him and snagged a cube of cantaloupe from his plate. “I mean, I may have my heart medication and mild anemia, but you are a piece of work.”

“How is not eating when I’m not hungry unhealthy?” Mal asked, wiping his fingertips on the leg of his pants. “I have a highly active lifestyle. I get fresh air and sunlight every day, weather permitting, and my physician says I have the healthiest heart he’s ever seen in a man my age.”

“You have a physician?”

Mal paused to stare at him, and Sil waved his fork dismissively. “Never mind, never mind.”

“Of course I have a physician.”

“I withdraw the question,” Sil said. “Question withdrawn.”

“What kind of stupid fucking question _is_ that?” Mal demanded. “You know I’m a human being, right? Not a wild animal? Fuck, I’m closer to sixty than fifty at this point. Occasionally, things go wrong and I need a tune-up.” Mal shook his head, waiting for Sil to either brush the question off again or give him some half-assed apology. Instead, it was Sil’s turn to stare. “…what?”

Sil blinked and looked down at his food again. “Nothing.”

Mal watched him, almost scrutinizing Sil the way he himself would scrutinize others. His reaction was odd. In anyone else, Mal would have taken it for embarrassment, or self-consciousness, but those feelings required some sort of functioning shame center in the brain, and Mal wasn’t convinced Sil had one. “What?” he repeated.

Sil fiddled with his sandwich for a moment, then shrugged and said, “I just assumed you were younger, that’s all.”

Mal didn’t know if he should take that as a compliment or not. Mostly, he just felt confused. He thought he seemed his age. He certainly thought he looked it. “How much younger?”

“I don’t know,” Sil admitted. “Closer to my age, I guess. No real reason—just a general assumption.”

“And how old are you?”

“Forty-seven.”

“…huh.” Mal looked him over, keeping the number in mind. If he’d been told to guess Sil’s age, forty-seven was more or less what he would have picked. Not young enough to be a catch, but not old enough to be distinguished. Hair that was thinning, but not quite balding yet—not drastic enough for a combover, but considerably wispier than Mal imagined it must have been when Sil was younger. And then Mal realized how difficult it was to imagine a younger version of Sil. He seemed like someone who’d been destined to live his entire life as a middle-aged accountant.

They went back to sitting quietly, ruminating on this new information about each other. Sil let Mal take a couple more cubes of cantaloupe before he pulled the dish away, fending him off with the prongs of his fork. He finished his sandwich, except for the crusts, and when his phone dinged, he glanced at it, sighed, and set it facedown on the table.

“Work?” Mal asked, already knowing the answer but not knowing what else to say.

“Mhmm.”

“You heading back over there?”

“Not until tomorrow,” Sil said. “Sunday afternoon and evening, at the very least, is my time. Barring any huge emergencies, like ‘our company has struck an iceberg’ huge, they can manage without me. Just need to keep my phone on to ensure I’m not missing any of those once-in-a-lifetime emergencies. Which means I also get to hear that charming little _ding_ every fifteen minutes when someone copies me on _yet another_ email that pertains to precisely _none_ of my interests or concerns.”

“You’re stressed.”

“Oh, how _ever_ did you guess?” Sil said. Mal rolled his eyes and left the table, and Sil sighed, trying to scale his frustration back, or at least not misdirect it at Mal. “Of course, this is what it’s like every week,” he went on. “Nothing new. Usually it’s bearable, if I have Saturday off like I’m supposed to, but yesterday was an anomaly. Nearly two hours to solve a minor clerical issue, but with the _people_ I have to deal with, it felt like ten years were shaved right off my lifespa— _ahhh_ …”

Sil shut his eyes as Mal stood behind him, resting his hands on his shoulders and slowly digging into them. He sat up straighter—his complaints forgotten, for the moment—when Mal’s grip tightened, then slouched again when he released, non-verbally offering himself up to Mal’s hands. Mal closed his eyes as well, enjoying Sil’s all too rare silence.

“You _need_ ,” he said quietly, pressing in with his thumbs and getting a faint whine out of Sil, “to stop _talking_.”

To his surprise, Sil obeyed. He limited himself to occasional sighs, only speaking up to direct Mal with a muttered “lower” or “harder.” Mal had never given a shoulder massage to anyone before, but he seemed to be doing well. He had to assume that between the two of them, the one who spent his days setting traps and chopping wood and climbing trees would have more capable hands than the one who spent his days clicking a mouse and tapping his smart phone screen. Even Mal’s old flip model required more dexterity.

He kept going, feeling Sil turn spineless beneath his touch, though that was hardly a departure from the norm. Mal was all toughness and sinew, while Sil was soft almost everywhere. Soft arms, soft waist, soft white underbelly. Even his back felt soft when he was sitting down, Mal realized, as he dragged his hands across it. He felt like prey all over.

Mal kept waiting for Sil to reach up and tap his hand, to tell him that was enough, or that he had more work he needed to do, but he didn’t. He seemed content to let Mal set the pace, and to sit there for as long as Mal was willing to offer his services. Mal thought about what he’d said earlier. Barring emergencies, Sunday afternoon, evening, and night were his.

The past two nights had ended practically the same way: like this, but with the positions reversed. Mal letting his eyes shut and letting Sil put his hands on him, not because he was too tired to protest, but because he was too tired to keep up the pretense that he even _wanted_ to protest. Letting Sil work the knots out of his shoulders, or mess up his hair, or draw spirals on his chest, had felt like letting him adjust every facet of Mal’s life, putting it in order and turning it into something steady and manageable for a while. It felt like trusting Sil with the controls, regardless of whether that trust was earned or not.

Despite what Mal’s instincts told him, it wasn’t an entirely bad feeling.

Mal swept his hands all the way up Sil’s arms and shoulders, then into his hair. When Sil took a breath, Mal bent down and pressed his mouth to his neck, just to hear what sound it would turn the exhale into. It was a little lower than usual, not Sil’s typical register. Encouraged, Mal grabbed his chin and turned his head to the side, kissing him. It started as a light brush of lips, but when Mal slid his hand down Sil’s chest, their mouths parted, and they melted against each other.

Sil tried to catch his breath as Mal’s hands kept moving, and when he realized they weren’t going to let up, he turned sideways in his chair to face Mal more easily. He reached up and wrapped his arms around Mal’s neck, weaving one hand into the back of his hair to push him deeper into the kiss. Mal responded fast, encircling Sil’s waist, and for a moment they remained there, in each other’s arms like the cover of some harlequin romance novel. Then Mal brought Sil to his feet, grabbed his hips, and lifted him just enough to seat him on the edge of the table.

Something about the change of position sent an unexpected surge through Sil. He grabbed Mal’s face and pulled him closer, touching his clean-shaven skin approvingly, his thumb brushing up against the corners of their mouths. When Mal caught him smiling, he pulled back an inch or so and said, “Better?” It was more of a wry comment than a question of approval, but Sil couldn’t pass up the chance to be magnanimous and bestow his approval anyway.

“Much,” he said, still moving his fingertips lightly over his skin. “That scruff was dreadful. Looked good, but made your face feel like hostile terrain.”

“You don’t know the first thing about hostile terrain,” Mal said. Sil rolled his eyes.

“Yes, yes, you’re very hardcore. God forbid I go one second without being reminded of it.”

Mal kissed him again, a surefire sign that he didn’t have a comeback, and Sil let him. He continued feeling Mal’s face, touching his sharp jaw and gaunt cheek, while Mal reached behind Sil and stepped forward, gently leaning him back. Sil would never, in his entire life, under threat of death, have admitted it to anyone, but he felt a very brief, very slight swoon at being put in a half-dip on his own dining table. He didn’t even need to hold onto Mal to keep his balance; Mal’s hands were steady enough to hold him in place on their own.

Emboldened by Mal’s eagerness, Sil reached behind him, sliding his hands down into his back pockets. He grabbed him and pulled him closer, until they were hip to hip. Mal gripped his back tighter and broke away from the kiss from a moment, but stayed near enough for his nose to brush against Sil’s cheek. He drew in one sharp breath, and then, as if the breath released the thought, he exhaled, “Fuck me.”

Sil paused, then moved back a few more inches to get a look at Mal’s face. “Well,” he said, “that’s…direct.”

Mal stared back at him. “Do you not want to?”

“No, I do,” Sil said, refraining from adding _obviously_. He slid his hands up to Mal’s waist, moving carefully. “But…now?”

“Right now.”

“I just had lunch. I’ll get a cramp.”

For a moment, Mal dropped his intense stare to give Sil a much flatter look. “God, you’re pathetic.” Sil gave him an unamused look right back.

“Just wait an hour, then. What’s the rush?”

“You said this is your time, didn’t you? Until, what—nine o’ clock tomorrow?”

“Well, I have to be up before nine. Usually around seven. Sometimes six-thirty; it depends—”

Mal sighed. “You don’t have to think about work until seven o’ clock tomorrow. And it’s—“ He glanced at the kitchen. “—one o’ clock today. If this is your time, why not do whatever you want with it? That’s what it’s for.”

He stayed close, his looming presence almost distracting Sil while he thought it over. He was always thinking, always engaging in an internal monologue, which was incredible, given how he also never seemed to stop talking. What he was thinking about now was how Mal could make a demand sound domineering, yet also sort of desperate. But for what? The obvious answer was that Mal spent a huge portion of his life alone, presumably going long stretches of time not just without sex, but without any lasting human companionship.

Then again, that hardly explained why he’d come _here_ , of all places. Sil knew he wasn’t the easiest person to hook up with, and he wasn’t exactly one of Mal’s strongest relationships. He’d only slept with him one time before last night, and even then, it was Mal who’d ended up leaving without so much as a hurried good-bye.

But it was also Mal who had come back.

Sil met Mal’s gaze again, then nodded and let Mal help him off the table. They headed back down the hall, but before they reached the bedroom, Mal abruptly said, “Hey. Just to be clear…nothing fucking insane.”

Sil raised his eyebrows, just one step away from laying his hand over his heart and saying, “ _Moi_?” in exaggerated disbelief. “I’m serious,” Mal said. “If I see any kind of… _implement_ come at any part of my body, I’m done. And if I have to fight you in order to get out, I will.”

Sil laughed. “You’re not a _hostage_ ,” he assured Mal, who had always felt like the line between house guests and hostages was pretty thin to begin with. “You said it yourself: you don’t _have_ to do anything. If you have reservations about this, then say so.”

Mal stared him down, as if he were trying to puzzle him out, and Sil shrugged. “Fine,” he said, turning around and heading down the hallway. He almost made it out of arm’s reach before Mal took him by the wrist and pulled him back to his room again. He felt like he was calling someone’s bluff by doing so, but he wasn’t sure if it was Sil’s or his own.

Mal tried to maintain some air of control, but he faltered when Sil insisted on changing the bedding before they proceeded. “What’s the point?” Mal asked as he watched Sil strip the mattress and get a new set of sheets out of the closet, feeling the mood from the dining table ebb away by the moment. “We’re just gonna mess it up again.”

“You’re in an _apartment_ , Mal,” Sil said, emphasizing the word by briskly flapping the fitted sheet until it unfolded. “Not a _ditch_ , or wherever you usually—”

“All _right_ ,” Mal snapped. “ _Jesus_.” He stood across from Sil, handling “his” half of the bed, just to speed up the process. He noticed that the sheets on his side weren’t as precisely arranged or tucked as neatly as Sil’s, but if Sil was bothered by the lack of symmetry, he didn’t say anything about it.

By the time they’d gotten the bed ready, the mood was irretrievably changed, and Mal wasn’t sure how to navigate it. He’d already allowed Sil to take charge of the situation, and so he tried to commit to that and refrain from turning this into some sort of power struggle. All he knew for sure was that he was grateful he’d never been the kind of person to talk during sex. General sounds were fine—they were neutral and involuntary—but words were information. And like all information, in Sil’s hands they were practically ammo, to be stored and used later at his discretion.

When they were finished, Sil had the courtesy to give Mal a few minutes of personal space and silence, sprawled on his stomach with his face turned away. Sil lay on his back, watching him, and when he finally spoke, all he said was, “Good?”

Mal grunted, most likely in affirmation, but Sil wanted a clearer answer than that. He didn’t mind reading between the lines if he had to—in fact, that was often his preferred mode of communication, if only to prove that he could do it—but in this case, he’d rather wheedle an actual confession out of Mal. There was just something so satisfying about getting a person to let go of his pride. Like working a splinter loose. He nudged Mal’s arm and said, “Was that a yes?”

Mal grunted again, definitely an affirmative this time. Sil smiled. “Don’t like to talk much, do you?”

“And you never shut up, do you?” Mal shot back. Sil laughed good-naturedly, letting Mal have that one, and in a flash, Mal realized what it was about Sil that put him so on edge. Unlike every other person Mal had ever known, Sil never seemed to take offense to anything he said. No matter how blunt, brusque, or even deliberately insulting Mal was, Sil just let everything slide with nothing more than mild amusement. And it was only now, after the twentieth insult or so, that Mal realized Sil had probably been keeping a silent tally on all of them. Racking up debt with every snide word or sarcastic comeback. Mal would have expected nothing less from the most vindictive man he’d ever met.

Sil was shifting around beside him, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Twice in one visit,” he said casually. “New record.”

Mal crossed his arms and laid his head on them, pretending to ignore him. Sil took one of the pillows Mal wasn’t using and stuffed it behind his neck for extra support. “Think you’ll have time for another round, or was this it?”

Mal exhaled sharply, and it took Sil a moment to realize it was a laugh. “That your way of asking me if I’m gonna spend the night again?”

“I suppose.”

Mal paused, then shrugged. Sil moved up onto his elbow, laying on his side and looking down at him. “Up to me, then?”

“I guess.” Mal was still a little unfocused from the past half hour or so, but as Sil’s words permeated his brain, he started paying attention. “Why?” he asked with sudden suspicion—which, to be fair, was the only way someone could ask that question of Sil.

“No reason, really,” Sil said, lying terribly and doing it on purpose. “Just a thought. I wondered if you might want to try something a little more…adventurous, before you go.”

Mal groaned, uncrossing his arms so he could take a pillow and lay it entirely over his head. “Gimme a fuckin’ break,” he said, his voice losing a lot of its edge through the inches of down alternative. Sil smiled.

“Not _quite_ an answer,” he said, playfully scolding, but he didn’t press Mal for a response just yet. He reached out and ran his fingertips up and down Mal’s spine while he waited, enjoying the way Mal tensed up before unwinding again. The tension was a reflex, and the release was proof that Sil was learning how to override it. Plus, the way Mal’s back and shoulders flexed was a nice bonus, too.

Still, after five minutes with no response from Mal, Sil started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep under there. But eventually he came back out with a sigh, crossing his arms beneath the pillow and laying his head on it. “Let me rest,” he said. “And stretch, and shower, and eat. And come up with a long, long list of non-negotiable boundaries.”

“Good,” Sil said, trying to sound more approving than excited. “Very good.”

He left Mal alone for a while to do all of the above, returning to the living room to go over some forms from the office in the meantime. Mal joined him a little later, taking one of the sandwiches from the fridge and decorating Sil’s tabletop with crumbs as he wolfed it down. When he was more or less finished with his meal, Sil broached the subject of Mal’s list. “Thoughts so far?” he said lightly. Mal wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he set his glass of water down, mulling it over.

It was difficult to come to a compromise. Mal was used to living a life of exploration and adventure, but in the bedroom, he was decidedly less exploratory and adventurous. Aside from the fact that his partners were exclusively male, he didn’t think there was anything particularly unusual about his preferences. He was there to fulfill a simple biological urge, and that was the beginning, middle, and end of it as far as he was concerned. Sil, on the other hand, seemed to need stimulation on the mental side of things as much as the physical.

“Look,” Mal eventually said, “the biggest issue here—about last time—is you caught me off guard. I’m not gonna agree to anything if it’s sprung on me by surprise. Period.”

“Fair enough,” Sil said, treading carefully now that Mal had finally decided to discuss their previous encounter.

“And I’m not doing anything, y’know, dangerous. No risk of actual injury, or I’m out of here.”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Sil said, waving in the direction of the hall, toward his room. “What do you think I have in there? Thumbscrews? Wooden horse? Choke pear?”

“Yeah, the fact that you can just rattle this shit off on demand doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.” Mal stood up and brought his plate and glass back to the kitchen, while Sil followed at his own pace, pleased by Mal’s growing ability to actually rinse off his own tableware. Sil stood by the refrigerator, halfway between Mal and the doorway, wondering in some small part of his brain if this placement put Mal on edge, made him feel like his escape route was cut off.

If it did, Mal didn’t show it. He set his plate in the sink and dried his hands on a towel, then regarded Sil carefully. “Why are you into this shit, anyway?” he asked, with no preamble. Sil leaned one shoulder against the refrigerator door and shrugged.

“Same reason you do what you do,” he said, taking a risk by turning the spotlight back on Mal. “The human brain craves new experiences. Keeps things interesting. Exciting.”

“That so.” Mal stepped forward, not pinning Sil like he’d done the night before, but making him press back against the refrigerator door through sheer presence. He really was built to loom over people, Sil thought, and he clearly knew it. His good posture certainly helped. Sil wasn’t decrepit or woefully out of shape—he wasn’t even that short—but years of working at his desk had given him a perpetual slouch, just enough to keep him from ever standing at his full height.

It was fine with Mal. He liked the feeling of having to bend down just to get to Sil’s neck. He kissed him a few times, feeling Sil relax a bit, before he asked, “And what new experiences am I going to be having today?”

Sil shivered. “Up to you,” he said, trying not to scrunch his shoulder up when Mal’s breath tickled his neck. “We can start with something mild…work your way up to more—” He paused when Mal nipped at his neck, and Mal used that opportunity to step closer, taking one of Sil’s hands and holding it against the refrigerator door. He used his free hand to tip Sil’s chin up further, laying his mouth on his throat.

Sil faltered for a moment, unable to focus on anything except Mal’s touch. “You should at least come up with a safeword, before we start anything,” he said quietly. “Something you won’t forget easily. Any ideas?”

Mal snorted derisively. “No,” he said, continuing to kiss Sil’s neck. Sil frowned and lowered his chin.

“Well, you need to come up with _something_ ,” he insisted. “It’s a matter of—”

Sil cut himself off when Mal interlocked their fingers and squeezed his hand. Hard. Sil’s arm tensed, with one brief twitch before freezing in place. This was a rare reaction, and it went beyond being startled—it was the way a person reacted when they knew, on an instinctive level, that they were prey. The sudden jolt followed by even more sudden stillness, the entire body on high alert. Mal waited until he sensed that stillness, and then he stood up straight again, meeting Sil’s gaze very calmly.

“‘No’ is my safeword,” he said simply. “As is ‘stop.’ Or ‘wait,’ or ‘don’t.’ Consider them all synonymous. If I say anything in that vein, and you don’t _immediately_ stop—or undo—whatever you’re doing, I will break your hand, Sil.”

Sil looked him in the eye and nodded, not cowed into obedience, but meeting his gaze with clear understanding. If he was death by a thousand cuts, knowing how to whittle away at someone’s fortitude over time, then Mal was the opposite, knowing just how much force to apply to break someone on the first go.

When Mal was convinced that Sil was willing to cooperate, he loosened his grip, massaging Sil’s hand with his thumb to undo the tension he’d put there. Sil swallowed as Mal traced the lines on his palm with the edge of his fingernail. “Very pragmatic choices,” he managed to say.

“I won’t hesitate to use them if I need to,” Mal replied. And then, with what was almost a smile, he added, “Try not to make me need to.”

Sil agreed to that, and after a few more minutes of making out in the kitchen to put them both at ease again, he excused himself to go set up the bedroom. “Give me a little while to figure out what we’re starting with,” he said, trying and failing to contain his eagerness. “Take your time; come in when you’re ready.”

Mal nodded and watched Sil go down the hall to his room, which he was sure would soon be transformed into some kind of state-of-the-art torture chamber. He sighed quietly and went back to the living room. He wasn’t as apprehensive as he expected to be. Nor was he as excited. The feeling he had was closer to the feeling of someone flipping through TV channels in the middle of a weekday. Whatever Sil was planning in there—whatever Mal had agreed to take part in—was just the latest in a long line of attempts to keep his life from going stale.

He stood at the far end of the living room, gazing out at the city. The windows were too large to open, for safety reasons, and Mal realized as he looked through the glass that he hadn’t gotten any fresh air since yesterday evening. He’d had no reason to step outside the apartment. Everything he required was already here, or could easily be brought back by Sil.

Mal studied the view. It seemed like a nice day out. Cold, but not as windy as the rest of the weekend had been. The skyline was grayish, like an old photograph, but it only made the sky itself look all the clearer, shining in a bright winter blue. That shade of sky was like a spark in the soul, and it seemed to say, _Look how vast I am. You can’t even see the end of me. Or maybe you could, but it would be a long chase—and you’re already behind._

Mal stared at the view. Then he looked back down the hallway, toward Sil’s room. Then at the front door, standing conveniently between them.

* * *

North Station was relatively empty this time of day, putting the pigeon to human ratio at roughly one to one. Mal sidestepped a pair of birds snacking on a pizza crust as he walked to the middle of the terminal to check the train schedule. All he knew was that he didn’t want to end up further east, jutting out into the ocean with nowhere else to go.

Lowell looked like his best bet for now. He subtracted the fare from his funds, added up the remaining bills in his pockets and shoes, and felt the wash of relief that came with knowing he had more than enough money to complete the first leg of his journey. With a contented sigh, he took a seat on a bench and shoved his bag under his legs, keeping an eye on the giant electronic schedule for updates. He wrapped the scarf a little more snugly around his neck as the doors to the platforms whooshed open and let the crisp air in.

Normally, he kept his phone buried deep in his bag, but today it was in his pocket, and he felt it vibrate against his leg. He took it out calmly and flipped it open to see what kind of message he’d been sent.

_You are a horrible, horrible man._

Mal chuckled and started typing, loving that his ridiculously outdated phone with its cumbersome keypad meant that Sil was forced to wait in suspense for his reply.

_sorry, had to leave, got an urgent call_

Sil’s reply was almost instantaneous, his accusatory tone bleeding through even the blocky letters on Mal’s screen. _From whom?_

Mal was so glad he asked. He had already typed his response.

_the wild_

_Oh, fuck you_. And then, a couple seconds later: _Really, fuck you._

_you specifically said i wasnt a hostage, so i took that to mean i was free to leave any time. was i wrong?_

Sil’s next reply took several minutes. Mal could practically feel him having a conniption through the phone.

 _You KNOW,_ the message began, which was a promising start, _leaving without a word, SNEAKING out after I’ve invited you into my apartment for two days now? That’s rude, even under normal circumstances. But you SAID you wanted to try this. I spent fifteen minutes setting everything up because of YOU. And where are you now? GONE._

_if it took 15 minutes just to set up then its probably not something i want to do anyway. sex doesnt require that level of preparation. its basic instinct. youre doing it wrong_

There was radio silence for a few minutes, and Mal could only imagine the look of sheer offense that last remark had put on Sil’s face. When he finally gathered himself enough to respond, it was simply to say, _Philistine_. Mal snorted and flipped his phone shut, putting it away again. If Sil wanted the last word, Mal would let him have it. It was the least he could do at this point, and he had to admit, Sil had chosen a good one.

For the next ten minutes or so, Mal relaxed, watching the trains come and go, and the people with them. When his phone buzzed again, he took it back out of his pocket, flipping it open curiously.

_AND you stole my scarf???_

Mal grinned, half-hidden by the article in question. _its cold out and i didnt have one of my own. im poor, remember?_

_That’s the ONLY ONE that keeps my face from going numb in this godforsaken winter._

_then i have good taste dont i?_

_You’re an actual criminal, you know that? You have committed a crime. I let you into my home, I buy you food, let you use my shower and sleep in my bed, and you STEAL from me? And you just HAD to steal my FAVORITE scarf???_

_i didnt know it was your favorite. just saw that it was warm_

_Yes, as did I, which is why I BOUGHT IT in the first place._

_its not like im holding it for ransom, youll get it back next time_

Mal paused, staring at what he’d just typed. He waited for Sil’s response, but there wasn’t one—or if there was, he was taking his time with it, letting the implication of Mal’s words sink in first. Mal snapped his phone shut, putting it in his bag before he could make any more accidental promises, and for the rest of his wait he focused solely on the train schedule, counting down the minutes until he could get back to where he belonged.

* * *

Sil stood by the window of his living room, his angry pacing coming to an abrupt halt as he reread Mal’s text. _Next time_.

It wasn’t enough to make him forget his indignation about his scarf—nothing was enough to make him forget his indignation about anything—but it was enough to mollify him for now. Sil glanced out the window, studying the skyline and wondering in which direction Mal had fled this time. Not that it mattered; even if Sil knew where Mal had gone, he’d never be able to catch him.

Though apparently, he didn’t need to. Mal might have run off like a wild dog, retreating to the barren wilderness which he found so much more tolerable than civilized life, with Sil’s scarf around his neck like a souvenir of his latest conquest. But souvenirs weren’t often taken with the intent to be returned.

Sil smiled as he put his phone away and got to work cleaning up his apartment. Mal had tried to take a trophy. Instead, he’d given himself a leash.


	4. Reversal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **predator-prey reversal** : _n_. an interaction in which the individual that is typically considered prey instead acts as the predator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: brief instance of animal cruelty toward a spider, if you're sensitive to that kind of thing (like I am).

Once was a mistake, Mal thought, as the train bore him closer to an all too familiar skyline. Even twice could be written off as a lapse in judgment. But three visits—now, that was officially a habit.

Or maybe a spree.

* * *

For simplicity’s sake, most people would generally agree that they had both a good side and a bad side. But Sil—remarkable flouter of social norms that he was—had a bad side and a worse side, and there was arguably no one in the world more familiar with this fact than the long-suffering employees of his dental office.

He winced at the slightest bit of contact, even after a generous dose of novocaine, but whenever they stopped to ask if he was feeling any pain, he said no. Only after a second dose did he become somewhat cooperative, at least until his phone starting to ding, alerting him to a sudden influx of work emails. Sil’s dentist had to threaten to confiscate his phone before he grudgingly put it back in his pocket. As much as he lived to argue, even he knew better than to talk back to someone who was about to put a drill in his mouth.

That was what online reviews were for.

After a grueling and antagonistic hour and a half for everyone involved, Sil left with two new fillings and instructions not to eat until the novocaine wore off, which he fully intended to ignore. He’d skipped breakfast and spent his only work-free morning this week in a dental chair—something had to give.

He went to his favorite bakery, planning to treat himself to something doughy and buttery and sugary and completely inadvisable to put inside his body, but which he felt he deserved, especially now that he was being bombarded with messages on what was supposed to be his day off. Even Zok was getting in on the fun, needling Sil with pointless questions about the rebranding budget, which he _knew_ were more suited to Shod’s department.

In many ways, Zok was the most frustrating of them all, as his unwavering competence gave Sil no leverage to knock him down a peg. He was ingratiatingly civil and polite and well-spoken and composed, and he rarely took part in the workplace gang-ups on Sil, but he rarely put a stop to them, either. And there was no mistaking the glint of pleasure in his eyes, as if he were living vicariously through his coworkers, getting off on bullying one of their own without putting a crack in his facade of professionalism. Sil might have been Var’s punching bag, but he was Zok’s pincushion.

As Sil joined the queue, he reminded Zok that Shod was not only in charge of specific budgetary issues, he was also physically present in the building, and he could help Zok sort his plans out in person and in a fraction of the time. Ignoring the usual protests (“I’m just no good with him; he doesn’t seem to get it when I try to explain; you’re so much better at communicating…”), Sil hung up on Zok, put his phone away, and emerged victorious from the bakery a few minutes later with a croissant in one hand and a latte in the other.

The weather was unseasonably nice, for early spring. It almost made Sil want to spend the day outdoors for once, instead of retreating to his apartment as soon as his errands were done. He started looking for somewhere quiet to sit down and enjoy his breakfast, and then stopped abruptly when his phone buzzed again in his pocket.

It took everything in him not to unleash the strangled, undignified noise of frustration that welled up in his throat. He shifted his food and drink to one hand, knowing it was a risky move, and proved correct when he felt the styrofoam cup slip from his fingertips. Sil had expected this—because why would anything _good_ be allowed to happen to him?—and tried to dodge the mess, but the drink splashed onto his shoe as it hit the ground and burst from its container. Fuming, Sil wrenched his phone out of his pocket and threw professionalism to the wind, answering Zok’s umpteenth call with a snarling, “What _is_ it?”

“Oh, good, it _is_ you,” the caller responded, sounding relieved by Sil’s outburst. “Thought I’d lost your number.”

Sil didn’t say anything, trying to let his brain reboot while a puddle of lukewarm latte hugged the edge of his shoe. Zok’s voice was deep, but it always carried either the boom of authority or the clarity of a mediator, depending on what the situation called for. This voice was not only deeper, but darker, and somehow both coarse and soft at the same time, like sand shifting on the ocean floor. A few more seconds passed before it spoke again.

“Hello? Have you died of fright?”

Sil checked the number—not one of his contacts—and then, just to be sure, he said, “Mal?”

“You have to ask?” Mal said, sounding amused. “Get a lot of calls like this?”

“Of course not,” Sil said, finally coming back to his senses and stepping away from the puddle. “This is just…a surprise.”

“A good surprise?”

“Depends,” Sil replied, trying to shake drops of latte off his shoe as he continued down the sidewalk. “Where are you calling from?”

“The worst city I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re in town?” Sil asked, his tone brightening up a bit. “Since when?”

“Not sure. Cities aren’t my usual territory; it’s hard to tell exactly where they begin and end.”

“You didn’t see any ‘Entering Boston’ signs?”

“No. Saw one a while back that said ‘Massachusetts Welcomes You,’ but I assumed it was ironic, so I stopped paying attention after that.”

He was having a little too much fun with this, Sil thought, but at least it wouldn’t take an entire weekend to coax a playful mood out of him this time. “Well, I suppose you’re looking for a place to stay, then,” he said, folding back the crinkly wrapping around his croissant so he could start in on a corner.

“What’s that noise?” Mal asked, ignoring Sil’s rather pointed remark.

“Breakfast.”

“What’re you having, a newspaper?”

“A croissant,” Sil said. Then, almost defiantly, he added, “With chocolate chips.”

“Cheat day, huh?”

“I earned this,” Sil retorted. “I spent my morning in the dentist’s chair. I had two cavities filled, not that it’s any of your business.”

“…how many calories does that burn?”

“Oh, you are on a _roll_ with the comedy today, aren’t you?” Sil asked, wondering, for the first time, if a visit from Mal would be worth the effort. “I had a miserable morning, my face is full of novocaine, and I decided to treat myself. Is that _quite_ all right with you?”

“I’m not your keeper. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ll be burning it off this afternoon, anyway.”

“Oh?” Sil said, putting the croissant on hold for the moment. “Sounds promising.”

“Glad you think so. I’ve got a little game prepared.”

“…a game.”

“Yeah. Well, more of a sport, I guess.”

“And that would entail…?”

“You ever read _The Most Dangerous Game_?”

“Of _course_ ,” Sil said, his irritability rising and his curiosity diminishing fast. This conversation wasn’t going at all the way he would’ve hoped, and on top of that, his croissant was getting cold, the once-melty chocolate chips already congealing back into solid lumps. “…well, no,” he amended, “I haven’t _read_ it, but I know _of_ it, obviously.”

“Well…that, basically.”

“What do you mean, ‘that?’ Use your words, Mal.”

“I’m at the train station,” Mal said, ignoring Sil’s attitude. “The, uh…North Station, is it? I’m leaving, though—on foot—and I’m not gonna tell you where I’m going. And what you need to do is see if you can track me down.”

He said it as if it were some exciting and adventurous task, and not the latest in a long list of pointless, mind-numbing chores for Sil to complete. What Mal was proposing sounded not only impossible, but also like a waste of several hours in what was already, so far, a very wasteful and trying day. “So, you came all the way here to play a children’s game?” Sil asked. “This is just hide-and-seek, on a _ridiculously_ large scale.”

“Close,” Mal said. “This is hide-and-seek _tag_.”

Again, he clearly expected this to have more of an effect than it actually did. Sil was skeptical that a wild goose chase around downtown Boston could even remotely resemble anything fun, but visits from Mal were too rare to pass up. So, with as much patience as he could muster, he invited Mal to explain himself more fully.

The rules were straightforward. Mal would spend ten minutes getting to a new location and wait there for twenty minutes, after which point he would proceed to the next location. He would stick to these half-hour shifts, for consistency’s sake, and he wouldn’t enter any buildings, always staying outside and somewhere reasonably visible. He would call Sil at each new location (though he made it clear that Sil was not to call him), and if he was in a good mood, he might even offer a clue as to his whereabouts. “This is an enormous handicap, by the way,” he added, “but the idea is for you to have at least a _chance_ of finding me. You’re lucky I have a sense of sportsmanship.”

“Mhmm,” Sil said, not seeing how he was lucky for participating in this convoluted game at all. “And what, exactly, is the end goal of this little exercise?”

“Well, for me, it’s to get to your apartment before you can catch me.”

“In that case, I’ll just _go_ to my apartment and wait outside the door,” Sil shot back, his interest and patience wearing thin again. In fact, all he really wanted to do at the moment was return to his apartment, and frankly, at this point, it was fifty-fifty whether he even wanted Mal to join him.

“Are you sure?” Mal asked, still not dissuaded by Sil’s tone. “If I get to your apartment building and find you sitting out there, then that means I’ve caught _you_.”

Sil didn’t respond. He’d never been one for playground games, even as a child, but he knew that, traditionally, only one person was “it” at a time. Something about the idea of two people simultaneously trying to seek each other out before they could be found themselves scratched a psychological itch he didn’t quite know he had.

“The point,” Mal went on, as if he knew what Sil was thinking, “is for you to use that brain of yours and figure out how to track me down before I can get to…say, your block.”

“And just for the sake of argument, what happens if you _do_ get there first?”

“I rob you, obviously.”

“Again? How unoriginal.”

Mal laughed, and Sil, encouraged by the sound, went on. “And what if _I_ win? What do I get out of this?”

“Your scarf back.”

“…you know,” Sil began, “you’re being awfully flippant for someone without any money or a guaranteed place to stay.”

“Made it this far without them, haven’t I?”

“Listen,” Sil said, sensing that Mal was getting into his element and wanting to head him off before the “game” officially began. “Just so we’re absolutely clear: you _are_ inviting me to hunt you for sport, correct? That _is_ what’s happening here?”

There was a brief pause, and then Mal said, “Keep your phone on. You’ll hear from me in half an hour.” And with that, he hung up.

Sil stared at his phone for a moment before putting it away again. He was still a bit apprehensive, but more than that, he was intrigued.

But even more than either of those reactions, he was astounded at Mal’s presumptuousness—to spring this game on him out of nowhere, before he’d even shown his face, and then to hang up on a conversation that _he_ initiated. That, on top of the fact that Sil had received two more work emails while he was on the phone…oh, that just _did_ it. The hunt was on.

Just as soon as he finished his croissant.

* * *

Sil’s search for a place to finish his breakfast—which was now unfortunately more like brunch—led him to the Public Garden. It was relatively quiet for a Saturday, and once he’d found a solitary bench, he sat down, started in on his croissant, and took out his phone to come up with a plan.

His first order of business was to put a pin in North Station and a pin in his apartment building. As he chewed on some cold pastry and re-hardened chocolate, he studied the places between those two markers. He doubted Mal would make this as easy as following the arterial path of the Freedom Trail, but at the same time, Mal wasn’t familiar with the city’s layout. He could only deviate from that path so far before he risked getting truly lost. As Sil finished his croissant and wished he had a latte to wash it down with, he decided that his best bet was to assume that Mal would gravitate toward well-known landmarks and touristy areas, even if he didn’t realize he was doing it.

Mal’s call came at the next half-hour, almost on the dot. “I’m near some historic building,” he said, offering his first clue.

“Oh, well, thank you, that certainly narrows it down.” Mal chuckled as he hung up, satisfied to have provided such an unhelpful clue, and Sil added a pin to the Paul Revere House, thanks to the sounds of a tour he had heard in the background, which Mal, for all his situational awareness, had apparently overlooked.

The next call was sooner than Sil expected, well before the half-hour mark, and as a result, he came dangerously close to greeting Var with what would have been a very inappropriate flirtation. Var kept him on the phone for far too long, as if he knew that Sil was actually trying to enjoy his day off, and Sil was only able to escape by snapping at him to bother Zok instead. He hung up on Var, but not before missing his next call from Mal, and when Sil tried to call him back, he refused to pick up.

He did send a couple of texts, however, which contained helpful clues such as _ended up somewhere loud and crowded, probably wont stay full 20 min. not cheating though because i doubt youd get here in time anyway_ and _dunno why but the shape of these buildings is pissing me off, theyre too long for their height and width, i hate it_.

 _Can I ask you a question about the buildings?_ Sil texted back. He had been instructed not to call, but Mal hadn’t said anything about texting. He seemed to agree with that reasoning, because he responded fairly quickly with a _yeah_.

 _Are there three of them_?

There was a slightly longer pause this time before Mal responded: _maybe_.

Sil returned to the map and stuck a pin in Faneuil Hall. He was pleased that his hypothesis was correct so far, that Mal was sticking to well-known areas and following a somewhat logical route. If he continued on his current course, then intercepting him would be all too easy. Sil would barely have to move.

The next time Mal called, he informed Sil that he was somewhere green, at least compared to the rest of the places he’d been so far. Sil thanked him for the update, trying to hide his excitement until he hung up. He had chosen the perfect spot. If Mal wasn’t at the Common or the gardens by now, then he was likely close enough that they would be his next stop. It seemed sensible to assume that he’d continue to be drawn to the greenery, and his next clue (“I’m somewhere nature-oriented”) only confirmed it.

With the pleasure of a cool breeze and radio silence from the office for the past twenty minutes or so, Sil rose to his feet, threw his croissant wrapper away, and headed toward the edge of the Garden to wait. If Mal was indeed coming this way, then Sil wanted to be there to greet him as soon as he arrived, if only so there was no mistaking that he’d gotten there first.

* * *

Mal crouched in front of the tank, elbows on his knees, eyes forward, locked in a staring contest with his whiskered opponent. He tilted his head, and the seal tilted its head, too, as if they shared a brain. It was the first time Mal had ever seen a seal in person—he tended to avoid the coasts, preferring to stick to deep forests and mountain ranges. After engaging with this one for a while, he decided that they were fairly clever and entertaining animals—not unlike the way he’d always heard dogs described, though he had yet to meet a dog that lived up to the reputation.

He took out his phone to check the time: just a couple minutes to the half-hour mark. He was about to put it back in his pocket when he noticed the seal staring at it, its eyes dark but undeniably curious. It floated a little higher in the tank, trying to look down at the lit screen. Slowly, Mal held the phone up to the glass until it was level with the seal’s eyes, then tilted it slightly, watching the seal follow the movement as unerringly as before. Mal righted the phone again, and then, without warning, flipped it upside down.

Instantly, the seal rolled over in the water, belly-up, its gaze still fixed on the screen. Mal chuckled as he put the phone away, and the seal, perhaps sensing that the fun was over, swam away to rejoin its other tankmates. With a wince, Mal rose to his feet, trying to walk off the stiffness in his knees. He took his phone out again a couple minutes later, and he was just about to dial Sil’s number when an incoming call made him pause.

On the one hand, Mal was annoyed by this blatant violation of his instructions. On the other hand, he was impressed that Sil had managed to cooperate until now. He flipped his phone open and tried not to sound too amused as he said, “Rulebreaker.”

“Where _are_ you?”

“I’m not telling you,” Mal said, with more patience than the situation required, just to rile Sil up further. “That would defeat the purpose of the game, wouldn’t it?”

“You’ve already defeated the purpose of the game. I’ve been waiting for over half an hour at what _should_ have been your next location—you never showed up. Granted, there’s a lot of ground to cover, but I would _think_ someone like you would stand out a bit.”

“And how do you know what my next location was supposed to be?”

“Because I’ve been plotting your route, _obviously_ ,” Sil said. “I _thought_ that was the whole idea. But this isn’t a fair game if you’re just going out of your way to be difficult for the sake of it.”

Mal rolled his eyes, sidestepping a couple of children who were racing toward the aquarium entrance. He wanted to explain that the game was perfectly fair, and that Sil in fact had the home field advantage, and that the uncertainty and the battling of two separate, independent wills was kind of the whole _point_. Before he could say any of this, however, and before he could cover his phone, one of the children called over her shoulder, “Mommy, mommy—look at the _seals_!”

Mal moved aside to let the children’s mother hurry past him, and he wondered if the girl’s voice, amplified by her pure joy at seeing a fairly common animal, had carried over to Sil’s end. After a moment of silence, Sil said, with a much more smug tone than before, “So…how did you like the penguin exhibit?”

“Didn’t go inside,” Mal said, trying not to laugh in spite of himself. “Figured one of us should adhere to the rules.”

“Hmm…” Sil replied, his usual go-to when he wanted to pretend he was mulling something over instead of floundering for a comeback. “Well,” he finally said, “regarding my earlier point: I can’t help noticing that you seem to have changed direction. Was that some brilliant tactical maneuver to throw me off your trail, or did you get lost?”

“I don’t see why that’s important,” Mal said, looking around and trying to remember which way he came from. Sil chuckled quietly.

“Well, in the interest of fairness, I think the rules should be revised. Can’t expect me to predict the movements of a man who has no idea where he’s going.”

“Yeah…I’ll give you a freebie,” Mal said. “How’s this? I’m gonna backtrack to where I was before, then keep walking for another ten minutes. If your predictions are right, I should end up wherever you think I was ‘supposed’ to. And I’ll stay there for forty minutes instead of twenty, just to give you time to cover all that ground—don’t want you overexerting yourself with a strenuous activity like walking.”

“Oh, how gallant of you,” Sil said. “Well, I’ll be seeing you soon, then, I’m sure.”

“Depends on how good your tracking skills are, General Zaroff.”

“If that’s some kind of reference, I don’t get it.”

“Philistine,” Mal said, hanging up before Sil could respond and heading out in what he was mostly sure was the right direction.

* * *

Sil took his time walking through the Common, less to savor the beautiful weather than to give the area a thorough sweep for Mal. After the fuss he made about plotting his route and predicting his movements, the last thing he wanted was for Mal to slip past him, especially with the extra time he’d so generously and condescendingly been allotted.

In the end, Sil’s theory proved correct. He had to trek all the way back to the Public Garden to find Mal, but sure enough, there he was, standing on the foot bridge, looking utterly out of place in the placid springtime atmosphere. There was always something just a little intense about Mal’s demeanor, focused but excessive, like cutting butter with a steak knife.

Mal was too observant for Sil to sneak up on him, which was probably for the best—Sil wasn’t eager to find out what Mal’s reflexes were like when he was startled. He noticed Sil before he even stepped onto the bridge, though it was a few seconds before they were close enough to speak, and Sil used that time to look Mal over as he approached. He seemed different. He still carried his giant bag on his back, but it looked lighter, somehow. Time in the wilderness must have done him some good, rejuvenated him. He still had dark circles beneath his eyes, Sil noticed as he closed in, but they were fainter and shallower now, and his face and posture radiated an energy and virility that he hadn’t possessed during his last visit. Probably just the spring weather, Sil thought; it had a healthy effect on people, apparently. It might even have a similar effect on him, if he spent more time outdoors instead of retreating to his office or apartment at every opportunity, complaining about the pollen.

When Sil was finally within speaking distance, Mal said, “Congratulations. You ‘caught’ me.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Sil said, leaning against the railing as he tried to fish a pebble out of his shoe. “I do live here, you know. And I assumed you’d be drawn to any gathering of three or more trees.”

“You assumed right.”

“You’re lucky I won, by the way,” Sil said, finally retrieving the small stone and flicking it out into the pond. “Saves you from having to admit that you can’t find your way to my apartment on your own.”

“Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure, will we?” Mal said with a small smile. He would’ve expected Sil to be a sore loser, but he wasn’t surprised to see that he was a sore winner, too. “So. What do you want your prize to be?”

Sil had his answer locked and loaded: “A latte.” Mal raised his eyebrows. “You owe me,” Sil explained, to which Mal seemed even more surprised. “That’s what you get for calling me while I’m trying to juggle breakfast.”

Mal looked like he was trying not to laugh. “All right,” he said, “one latte. What’ll that cost me, like, thirty bucks?”

“I’ll give you time to scrape together your funds,” Sil said dryly. “For now, I’ll settle for the return of my scarf.”

“Ah…” Mal glanced over his shoulder at his bag. “You’re gonna have to wait—it’s buried in there. I’ll dig it out later.”

“Fine.”

“Might want to get it dry-cleaned, too, or whatever it is you do to this thing. It’s been in the wildnerness for…I dunno. Months.” Mal paused, and then, as if a compliment about the scarf would cancel out the fact that he’d stolen it, he added, “Warm, though.”

“Yes, and that should be _very_ helpful now that the temperature’s in the seventies.” Mal snickered, and after a moment, Sil conceded, “I suppose it _is_ nice out, at least. Walking around downtown Boston isn’t really my idea of fun, but you chose the right day for this little game of yours, all things considered.”

“Yeah,” Mal said, looking out at the pond again. “Don’t take this as a ringing endorsement or anything, but this place isn’t so bad when it’s not freezing.”

“It’s not,” Sil agreed. “The mild seasons are tolerable. More or less.”

Mal nodded vaguely, watching a pair of swans patrol the pond from a safe distance. When they both seemed to realize that they were just standing around, awkwardly discussing the weather, Mal jerked his head back toward the end of the bridge, and they started walking.

“So…you got the feeling back in your face yet?” Mal asked, where a more normal person might have said something like, “How’ve you been since the last time I saw you?”

“Yes, _finally_ ,” said Sil, who would always favor an opportunity to complain over normal conversation. “And would you believe they still wanted me to come to the office today?”

“Don’t you get sick days or something?”

“Yes, of course,” Sil said, waving a fly away from his face. “But I try not to use them for anything short of an emergency. Otherwise, I get hounded about it by Var, who’s apparently never been sick a day in his life. Of course, I get hounded about it if I _do_ come to work sick, but at least then I can mitigate the damage. Better to suffer through the day with a headache or congestion than stay home and know that they’re all accusing me of slacking off.”

“You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, huh?”

“It’s unfair,” Sil said, sounding genuinely bothered by it. “I’m not as healthy as the rest of them, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I have a heart condition.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that before,” Mal said. “Several times.”

Sil shrugged, and they walked for a few more minutes in silence. The trees rustled overhead, and a few fat gray squirrels clung to their trunks, their puffy tails twitching neurotically. “Well,” Sil finally said, “this was a change of pace. Not that I’d want to make a habit of it. But it was nice to have a little warning before you dropped in, for once.”

“I like to keep things interesting.”

“Hmm,” Sil said, wondering how far he could push his luck. “Got any other games you like to play?”

Mal thought it over for a minute. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “It’s gonna sound boring compared to the one we just played, though.”

Sil didn’t ask him to share—he simply waited for him to. “Sometimes,” Mal went on, “when I’m bored, I like to try and figure out what kinds of animals different people would be. Not a specific species, usually. More like what type of hunter they’d be, or if they’d have any symbiotic relationships. Where they’d fall on the food chain. Stuff like that.”

Sil was intrigued, but he covered it up with a wry smile. “Spoken like a serial killer in training.”

“Yeah, well, look who’s talking.”

Sil let him have that one. “So,” he began, and Mal knew what was coming; it was always the same follow-up, whenever he shared this little game with anyone. Always the other person wanting to know what Mal thought of them, which branch of the animal kingdom he’d slotted them into. Everyone seemed to expect to be something impressive and flattering—an apex predator or keystone species, or even some kind of scavenger with a cool reputation. But the majority of people, by definition, weren’t that special, and what Mal usually suggested was something much more mundane, if he bothered to come up with anything at all.

He expected no better from Sil, who seemed to delight in putting on this gratingly coy air and trying to pry information or flattery out of Mal. Then again, Sil also seemed to delight in catching Mal off guard, which he did now by saying, “What kind of animal would you be, then?”

Mal paused, surprised that he was being asked about himself, and even more surprised that he didn’t have an answer. He figured he spent so much time in the wilderness that the question didn’t feel hypothetical for him the way it did for others. “I dunno—never really thought about it,” he said truthfully. And then, following an impulse, as he so often did, he said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

He expected Sil to look flattered, or to hold it over Mal’s head that he was seeking out Sil’s opinion of him, which felt somehow like giving him some sort of power. At the very least, Mal expected any number of cheesy, flirtatious answers that had little to no relevance to him as a person. But Sil seemed to be taking the question somewhat seriously, mulling it over as they walked beneath the branches of a maple tree. “Well?” Mal asked, when he felt he’d given Sil enough time to come up with something.

Sil looked up, appraising him for a moment, and then, with an insulting amount of certainty, he said, “A snail.”

Whatever Mal had anticipated, it couldn’t have been farther from Sil’s actual answer. He barked out a laugh at the sheer absurdity of it, and Sil smiled, looking pleased with himself. “A snail?” Mal said, trying to sound offended but too amused to quite get there. “Why a _snail_?”

“Easy,” Sil said, gesturing to Mal’s shoulder, but he drew his hand back suddenly when he noticed something clinging to the broad strap of Mal’s bag. He couldn’t identify it at first—it was obviously some sort of bug, but it seemed less like a real creature than a living cartoon, a fuzzy, pastel _thing_ that couldn’t have looked more out of place with Mal’s vulturine appearance.

“Oh, don’t move,” Sil said hurriedly, “you’ve got a—”

As he still didn’t know what the thing was, he simply pointed at Mal’s shoulder again. Mal raised his eyebrows, then followed Sil’s hand, hiking his shoulder up to see what had caught his attention. “Oh,” he said calmly, as if he’d noticed his shoe had come untied, and Sil watched him raise his hand to swat or flick the offending creature away.

Instead, Mal made a crook of his index finger, held it in front of what Sil now realized was a moth, and, with his thumb, coaxed the insect onto it. He twitched his hand a few times, trying to startle the moth into flight, but it refused to take the hint, seeming perfectly comfortable where it was. With a sigh, Mal lowered his hand slightly and walked along with it, scanning the area for a place to drop off his hitchhiker.

“So, a snail?” he repeated, stepping off the path for a moment to nudge the moth off his hand and onto a barely flowering plant.

“Yes,” Sil said, still a little thrown off by Mal’s non-reaction to finding a strange insect clinging to his shoulder. He nodded at Mal’s bag. “Because you carry everything with you wherever you go.”

Mal snorted. “As long as you’ve got your reasons, I guess. You couldn’t have picked something less pathetic, though?”

“Such as?”

“I dunno. Hermit crab?”

Sil’s eyes lit up. “Even better. You _are_ a hermit, and you have an exceptionally crabby attitude. Most of the time, anyway.”

“Only around you,” Mal said, ducking under a low branch. “The point of this game isn’t strictly to insult people, by the way.”

“I like to make my own rules,” Sil said, pointing Mal toward a path that would take them out of the gardens.

“So I’ve noticed,” Mal said, and he followed Sil’s lead back to the main road and the last few blocks to his apartment.

* * *

Neither one of them was willing to say it—or else they both thought it was so apparent that it went without saying at all—but the past couple hours had been like an extended, long-distance psychological foreplay. All of the pretense and wariness that Mal had brought with him on his last visit, and all the careful boundary-testing that Sil had engaged in, for Mal’s benefit as much as his own curiosity, were gone. They were on each other almost before the door closed. Sil even tried to take Mal’s backpack off for him, though he greatly underestimated its weight and nearly buckled beneath it. Mal laughed and used the opportunity to show off a little, taking the bag and setting it on the floor with ease while Sil regained his balance.

Once they were in the bedroom, however, the levity faded, and Mal slowly realized that his afternoon plans may have had an unforeseen side effect. With Sil beneath him—his heart fast, his breathing heavy, and his pulse warm—Mal was reminded of times when he’d held prey in his hands that he was seconds away from killing. The rise in tension, the heightened senses, the last-minute pitch of emotion—though in one case, it was desperate, a flare of fear like a star burning itself out of existence. In the other case, it was just good, making life a little better for a few minutes before gradually settling back to normal.

They weren’t the same, Mal assured himself, trying to banish the unwanted and unnerving thought. One was life, and one was death, and while there may have been some uncanny similarities, they weren’t the same. It was just a curious comparison, the natural outcome of having sex after spending an afternoon on the hunt. It had been an interesting experiment, and an enjoyable enough time, but Mal made a mental note not to combine the two in the future.

Afterward, Sil deigned to keep him company for about two minutes before he left to take a shower. Mal waited until he heard the bathroom door shut and the water come on before he settled down again. As much as he relished his alone time, and despite his general opposition to displays of affection, public or otherwise, he could have stood to have Sil hang around for a few minutes more. Sex was just the fulfillment of a basic biological urge, and Mal usually went so long without it that he had little patience for drawing it out. But he had nothing against lying together afterward, if only to have another warm body close by for a while.

Sil, on the other hand, seemed more concerned with cleanliness, as if the entire act disgusted him once it was over. For a moment, Mal had the briefest thought of joining him in the shower—it would be a win-win, cleanliness and closeness. But it was just a thought, and a ridiculous one at that. And even if it weren’t, the two of them seemed to have an unspoken agreement that the bathroom would remain a solitary space. They shared every other room in the apartment—the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. It was vital, Mal knew, to carve out at least one place in any dwelling where a person could exist as an individual. Everyone deserved some territory to themselves, even if they had to take turns with it.

Once they’d both showered and dressed, Mal made his way out to the living room, where Sil was waiting. He glanced at the kitchen clock—as if he couldn’t have checked the time on the phone in his hand—and said, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. All I’ve had today is that croissant.” He turned his attention back to Mal and added, “Interested in getting dinner?”

It was a clever strategy, waiting until now to ask him. Mal had played his fun little game, gotten laid, and could leave now if he wanted. The option was there, clear and easy. But to take it would mean admitting that he really did just come here to get laid, which felt just a bit too tactless, even for Mal. The social pressure to accept the invitation was closing in.

Or maybe Sil was just hungry. It was difficult to tell sometimes what was the product of careful calculations, and what was the product of Sil being a regular person and acting on impulse. As Mal’s stomach growled, he decided it didn’t matter much either way, and he shrugged agreeably and said, “I could eat.”

* * *

The restaurant had calm lighting, a low noise level, and food that smelled adequate, all of which met Mal’s standards. He sat across the table from Sil, drinking a Sam Adams like the tourist that he so vehemently denied being. To be fair, Sil supposed that tourism implied a home to eventually return to, and as far as he could discern, Mal had none.

When their meals arrived, Mal wasted no time in digging in. He made it nearly halfway through his dish before Sil even touched his side of vegetables, and, unable to help himself, Sil said, “When was the last time you ate?”

Mal wiped his mouth—with a napkin this time, instead of the back of his hand—and thought it over. “Yesterday,” he said. “Yesterday evening, sometime.”

“Why do you do this to yourself?” Sil asked, a little judgmentally, but also with a genuine desire to understand. Mal shrugged as he returned to his meal.

“I’m not _doing_ anything to myself. I get enough to eat; I just don’t do it as often as you.”

Sil let him get back to his food, and refrained from needling him any further about it. From his perspective, Mal seemed to eat every meal like a man who had no idea when he’d get another chance. Sil couldn’t imagine how that could be healthy in the long term, but considering Mal’s physique, he was in no position to argue with the results. Besides, Mal seemed to approach sex the same way, and Sil couldn’t argue with the results there, either.

He waited until they were near the end of their meal, but before Mal had cleared his plate, to make his next offer. “So,” Sil said as Mal helped himself to the remains of the bread basket, “are you going to stay the night?”

Mal tore a piece of bread in half, debating whether he was going to eat it. Sil seemed to close off Mal’s avenues of escape just by asking. He hadn’t phrased it like a loaded or a leading question—in fact, he’d been about as straightforward as possible—but something about his tone made it feel so heavily implied that the answer was going to be yes.

“Mal? Did you hear—”

“Why do you say it like that?”

Sil raised his eyebrows. “Hmm? Like what?”

“Like it’s my call,” Mal said, pulling loose flakes off the crust of the bread that he still hadn’t eaten and knew he wasn’t going to. “It’s your place. It’s up to you whether I get to stay over or whether you’re gonna kick me out to sleep on the street.”

Sil looked flabbergasted. “I would never,” he said, and for all his duplicity and love of holding things over people’s heads, Mal believed him. Sil may have been the most petty and vindictive individual Mal had ever met, but as far as he could tell, he wasn’t senselessly cruel.

“I guess so, then,” Mal said, finally putting the bread down on his otherwise empty plate. “I mean, it’s either that or shell out for a motel room. Might as well go with the cheaper of two evils.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t say that if you knew how much that place costs me a month.”

“How much does it cost?” Mal asked as he downed the last of his beer, taking the bait that Sil so obviously wanted him to.

“Thirty-seven hundred, plus utilities,” Sil said matter-of-factly, while Mal choked on his drink. His reaction seemed to please Sil. He accepted the check, almost preening, as if he were eager for an opportunity to flaunt his wealth, while Mal waved away their waiter’s concern, clearing his throat with a sip of water and wiping the beer off his chin.

It was dark out by the time they left, but nowhere near as cold as it had been during Mal’s last visit. They took their time walking back to Sil’s apartment, keeping a moderate pace and letting their dinner settle. Mal tried to relax, but the onslaught of noise was something he could never get used to in an urban environment. He swore he heard someone lay on their horn in response to an ambulance siren. Not for the first time—not even for the first time that _day_ —Mal wondered if the cost of venturing into the city was worth the reward.

“So,” Sil said conversationally, confirming that it probably wasn’t, “now that you’ve had some time to think it over: what kind of animal would I be?”

“What’s that?” Mal said, and Sil smiled, unimpressed by his attempt to pretend he hadn’t heard, even over the din of the traffic.

“That little game of yours. What kind of animal would I be? You must have an idea by now.”

“Shockingly, I don’t spend all my free time trying to figure you out,” Mal said. “And why would I, anyway? You never asked.”

“Well, I’m asking now,” Sil said, still smiling, undeterred by Mal’s bluntness. Forced to accept that he had no conversational exit strategies left, Mal went quiet as he thought it over, and in a rare moment of consideration, so did Sil.

It was typical of him to wait until now to ask, letting Mal think that he wouldn’t spring that question on him when he’d probably been waiting for the perfect moment all afternoon and evening. It was like how he’d waited for just the right time to invite Mal to dinner, and then to ask if he’d be spending the night.

In fact, the way Sil had chosen to ask the question—casually, once Mal was lulled into a false sense of security—practically provided the answer. He was an ambush predator. Even his approach to their hunting game today supported that theory: Sil knew that he wasn’t equipped to pursue Mal, so he had simply lurked by his home territory instead, waiting for Mal to do the work for him and wander into his range.

It was fitting, but Mal didn’t want to give Sil the satisfaction of an accurate answer, so instead he said, “A parasite.”

To Sil’s credit, he played his role well, looking appropriately insulted. “A _parasite_?” he repeated. “ _How_ can I be a parasite? I’m the one who pays for everything. If anything, _you’re_ the—I am _literally_ your host!”

“Fair point,” Mal laughed, and he meant it. “You’re good at this game, too.”

“Well, you challenged my answer earlier; I think I’m owed the same courtesy,” Sil said, still maintaining his haughty, offended air. Still, the compliment seemed to mollify him, as did Mal’s good humor about it, and they walked on without further debate.

There were other games he was good at, Sil thought, though he knew better than to say it. He didn’t have the best track record with Mal, who had already balked from his suggestions twice. If Sil were being perfectly honest, he was surprised that Mal had shown up again at all, despite the promising nature of the text from his last visit. At best, Sil had assumed that he’d get his scarf back in the mail eventually, though he had resigned himself to the very real possibility of never seeing it, or Mal, again.

He almost wanted to share this with Mal, just to let him know how well he’d caught Sil off guard today, but Mal looked preoccupied with another thought. “What?” Sil asked, wondering if Mal was still trying to figure out how get away with labeling him as a parasite.

“I changed my mind,” Mal said. “You’re not in the food chain at all. Not the natural one, anyway. You’d be one of those little dogs, y’know, the kind that are bred to have anxiety and whine and sigh all day.”

Sil raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?” he said, feeling a trace of real indignation at this answer, maybe because Mal had clearly put some actual thought behind it. His bafflement only amused Mal further.

“It’s perfect. You don’t get any real exercise—you just sit around all day, letting your nerves get the better of you. And you make those stupid fucking noises all the time.”

He waited for Sil to get even more offended, but all he got was a look of blank confusion. “C’mon. That noise you make—something between a sigh and a hum. You do it all the time,” Mal said, when Sil only looked more confused. “You were _just_ doing it.”

Sil paused, mentally rewinding the last few minutes as if he would suddenly remember a sound he hadn’t even been aware of making. “I didn’t realize,” was all he could say. Mal snorted.

“Fucking obnoxious habit,” he said, finally bringing that flat, indignant look back to Sil’s face. “No wonder your coworkers can’t stand you.”

“I thought you said the point of this game _wasn’t_ to insult each other.”

“Yeah, it’s not,” Mal said with a grin. “But your way’s more fun.”

Sil decided not to read too much into that remark, but as they entered his building and headed for the elevators, he couldn’t help thinking that it boded well for future visits.

* * *

Mal didn’t stay past the next morning, but he didn’t take off as soon as Sil’s back was turned, either. He gathered his belongings—the few he’d unpacked in order to find Sil’s scarf the night before—and once Sil was ready for work, they headed out together.

“You’re welcome to stay,” Sil reminded him as he rummaged through his briefcase in the elevator, only partially paying attention to his own conversation while he tried to make sure he had everything he needed. “I’ll only be a couple hours.”

“I know,” was all Mal said in response, and Sil didn’t push it.

The office was on the way to South Station, and Sil tried to point Mal in the right direction as they walked. “It’s a big building—Greek columns, a giant clock, I think an eagle on top?—you can’t miss it. You all set with money?”

“I’m good.”

Again, Sil didn’t press the matter. They walked on for a while until they reached the same bakery Sil had gone to the day before. Mal declined Sil’s offer to buy him breakfast, but he lingered outside rather than continuing on to the station while Sil got himself a sandwich and a drink. Like yesterday’s meal, it wasn’t remotely part of his ideal diet, but Sil assured himself that he’d earned it by getting more fresh air and exercise than usual this weekend.

When he stepped outside, Mal eyed his breakfast choices, but whether he was being silently judgmental or just too prideful to admit that he wished he’d gotten some food, too, Sil didn’t bother to ask. They continued on until the time came to separate, and Sil held out his half-eaten sandwich, pointing down the road.

“Just keep going—you’ll see it soon. This would be much easier if you had a phone from this century, by the way.”

“I’m good,” Mal repeated. After wishing him luck, Sil started to turn in the direction of his office, then paused when he saw Mal fishing for something in his pocket.

“Hang on,” Mal said, pulling out a few bills and trying to uncrumple them while Sil turned to him again, frowning in confusion.

“Not short, are you?” he said, a little reproachfully. “I _asked_ you if you had enough.”

“I do,” Mal said, managing to smooth out one of the bills. “This is for yesterday.” When Sil only gave him a blank look, Mal nodded at his drink. “The latte?”

Even with the explanation, it took a moment for it to click, but when it did, Sil barely withheld a laugh. “Oh!” he said, while Mal lowered his hand, suddenly second-guessing himself. “I was joking about that.”

“Oh,” Mal said, still holding onto the money, as if he couldn’t decide whether the correct protocol was to put it back in his pocket and forget the whole thing, or insist on paying anyway. Sil observed his internal struggle (while refusing to help) with curiosity and what could only be described as sadistic fondness. Mal looked unusually embarrassed, like he wanted to draw into himself to escape, and Sil realized that the comparisons to snails and hermit crabs weren’t that far off the mark. Finally, Mal shoved his fist back into his pocket and said, “All right. Well, until…”

He shrugged, leaving the rest of his farewell open-ended, but hardly ambiguous. Sil smiled and said, “All right, then,” and with a brief parting nod, they each headed off in their own direction.

* * *

Requiring his staff to come in on Sunday was generally regarded as the worst idea So had ever implemented in his draconic reign. The only upside was that it put everyone in an equally bad mood, and from that shared displeasure came a sort of natural, unspoken truce. No one interacted with anyone they didn’t absolutely have to. They gave each other a wide berth and stuck to their own departments, most not even bothering to leave their offices or cubicles. The little heys and how’s-it-goings that were usually sprinkled throughout the day were reduced to one efficient upward nod as a greeting, and a downward nod as a good-bye. The less talking and eye contact, the better.

It was the monthly team meetings, however, that threw a wrench into everyone’s plans to mind their own business and act like they got along. It was impossible to strike any kind of truce when they were all crammed into a conference room together, forced to “share ideas” and “assess performances” and come up with ways to “increase productivity” by “thinking” “outside” “the box.”

So had never attended these oh-so-important meetings. Zok always filled in as interim manager, and no one bothered to challenge his authority for these half-hour stints. It wasn’t like there was any prestige in it. No one wanted to be at these meetings, and no one took them seriously. It was a common theory that So only scheduled them to intentionally frustrate his employees, to keep the workplace from getting too mellow, and to prevent the formation of any alliances or friendships among his subordinates, lest they get it into their heads to work together to overthrow him and usurp the title of CEO.

He possessed all the hallmarks of a terrible and ineffectual leader. But he was a shrewd boss.

Tempers were shorter than ever today. Var kept giving Sil the stink eye from across the table, and Sil didn’t even know why until Var grumbled, “Will you cut that out?” and nodded at his pen, which Sil realized he’d been clicking incessantly for the past few minutes. He gave it one last click to retract it, far more deliberately than he needed to, and laid the pen down with a smile of bitter compliance. Var snorted before pretending to listen to Zok again, who was trying to draw everyone’s attention to an absolute eyesore of a pie chart. Sil didn’t bother trying to make sense of it. This entire meeting was a joke. He could’ve spent the past half-hour trying to wheedle Mal into having breakfast for once, and it would have been less of a time-waster.

Var snorted again, muttering “ _allergies_ ” when one of their coworkers glanced at him, but Sil knew that this was year-round behavior for Var, not bound to any particular season or weather condition. They were all full of habits they didn’t seem to notice, apparently.

When Var snorted for the third time in as many minutes, Sil had to resist the urge to pick his pen back up and jam it in his own ear. He could sit through Zok’s pointless droning indefinitely, but this was going to drive him insane. It was such a gross, grunting noise, like…

Sil thought it over, then smiled a little to himself. Like one of those dogs, bred for no real purpose except to exist. One of those notoriously brachycephalic breeds. Just sitting there across the table, all bulky mass and snorting breaths like a grouchy, lumpy English bulldog.

Sil checked his watch, then leaned back in his chair and started assessing his other coworkers, just to pass the time until this pathetic excuse for a meeting was over. This one was a turtle, that one a badger, those two a pair of sloths, all the way down the line. He skipped over Zok, not knowing quite what to make of him, as usual, and he only managed to label a couple more people before the meeting drew to an end. Sil rose stiffly from his chair and started to gather his things along with everyone else, but he barely lifted his packet of papers before he dropped them again and stepped back in alarm.

A spider, which had been nestled among Sil’s papers, scuttled across the tabletop, panicked by the sudden movement and the loss of its hiding spot. Sil’s reaction was mirrored by a few other people, some of them even hurrying to leave the room. Only one person sprung into action, as if he’d been waiting for this exact situation to unfold. As the spider made a break for the edge of the table, heading for its safe, dark underside, Var grabbed a sticky note and laid it down over the unwanted guest, trapping it with the adhesive strip. Then, without hesitation, he banged his fist down on the paper decisively and with a truly excessive amount of force, given the size of his quarry.

The few people left in the room flinched instinctively, and Zok outright jumped and whirled around at the noise. Var peeled the sticky note off the table, grimaced with a quiet “ _ugh_ ,” and balled it up before chucking it into the wastepaper basket. He gathered the rest of his things while his coworkers filtered past him, but before he left, he glanced at Sil—standing back from the table, his papers fanned out where he’d dropped them. Var snorted again, this time with a smirk, mistaking Sil’s stillness for genuine fright. “At ease, Sil,” he said reassuringly. “The coast is clear; you’re safe now. No need to thank me.”

His condescending tone was more than enough to snap Sil back to reality. “Oh, no,” he said, equally sarcastic, “of course, such heroics should be rewarded. Zok, I nominate Var for the medal of bravery.”

“What?” Zok said, still trying to figure out what had just happened. He’d been busy with his precious presentation materials when the spider emerged, and all he’d turned around in time to see was Var abusing a sticky note. Var shook his head with a chuckle and returned to his office. Sil gathered his papers again—checking both sides of each one, just in case—and left as well, followed more slowly by Zok, who let out a beleaguered sigh and started pushing chairs back to the table.

As Sil walked down the hallway, he had to admit that, for Var, the use of the sticky note was fairly clever. It had saved him the trouble of cleaning up the mess, or finding some interns to clean it up for him. But as the sound of Var’s fist hitting the table echoed in his head, what Sil found himself thinking of was Mal holding his finger out to the moth, guiding it off his shoulder and onto his hand, with hardly a pause in the conversation, without any emphasis on what he was doing. It hadn’t even seemed to occur to him that his behavior might be out of the ordinary, which made it stand out to Sil all the more.

He’d never been taken in by displays of gentleness before, and he couldn’t see himself starting now. Maybe it had less to do with the gentleness itself than the fact that such things were almost exotic in Sil’s world, where traits like self-centeredness and manipulation and ambition were prized. An act of mercy, even if it cost nothing, was practically taboo.

Maybe it was just the unexpectedness of it, the excitement that accompanied seeing a new side of someone you thought you had mostly figured out. Like the way Mal had apparently taken Sil’s comment about the latte to heart, or the slight lisp that sometimes emerged when he let his guard down. It didn’t affect his speech all that much—Sil assumed most people probably overlooked it—but it was enough to soften a few words every now and then, and it was a delightful contrast to his usual sharp, gruff demeanor.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t about Mal at all, Sil thought, returning to his office and sitting down at his desk with a sigh. Maybe he was bound to find any example of normal, basic human behavior intriguing at this point in his life. As one of Var’s trademark snorts resounded down the hallway, Sil supposed that was what he got for surrounding himself with utter freaks and morons in the workplace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a [rosy maple moth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryocampa_rubicunda), just for the record.


	5. Agonistic Behavior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **agonistic behavior** : _n_. social interactions related to fighting and conflict (e.g. threats, aggression, retreats, and conciliation).

A melancholy prelude emanated from Sil’s phone, floating through his apartment like a ghost. It was one of his favorites, but he barely heard it—he was using it as background noise to help him focus on Shod’s quarterly reports. In Sil’s world, even the most beautiful piece of art was put to work as a productivity tool.

The view from his massive window had been dark for hours, but Sil was sitting with his back to it, anyway. The novelty of being able to see the entire city from his apartment had long since worn off. More often than not, it distracted him from whatever work-related task or business-related book he was trying to get through. And so his home office experience did not involve sipping wine and slouching comfortably in an armchair in his living room, surveying the city below as if it were his own empire, but rather sipping wine and slouching uncomfortably on a bar stool at his kitchen island, gritting his teeth every time he corrected Shod’s work and his ballpoint pen scritched over the laminate countertop.

He was so engrossed in the column of numbers before him that he barely noticed when the music faded to let an incoming call through. By the time Sil managed to tear himself away from his work, he’d missed it, and if the name on the screen had been anyone else’s, he might not have bothered to return it. But Mal’s visits were worth interrupting his schedule for—even if they were still annoyingly spur-of-the-moment. Sil capped his pen and laid it down for a rest, picking his phone up instead.

“Hey,” Mal said on the second ring. “You home?”

“At ten p.m.? On a weekend?” Sil said with a light scoff. “Of _course_ I’m home.”

“Great. Come down and let me in.”

Sil rolled his neck and shoulders, trying to work out a crick. “A little late, isn’t it?” he said, only half-teasing.

“What do you care? You’ve got the day off tomorrow, right?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I do not.”

“Yeah. Saturday.”

“ _Today_ is Saturday. Or _was_ ,” Sil said, glancing at the clock. “Practically tomorrow already—”

“Whatever. Just let me up.”

Sil sighed. “Well, _someone’s_ in a demanding mood. Does that bode well for me?”

“I’m not playing your bullshit games, Sil. Are you coming down, or do I need to find somewhere else to sleep tonight?”

Sil tried not to, but he took a bit of offense to that. He thought he’d been very accommodating of Mal so far, no matter how inconvenient or startling his arrivals were. It went without saying that Sil would take him in whenever he showed up, but it just wasn’t the same when it was an entitled assumption on Mal’s end, rather than a generous offer on Sil’s.

Besides, it was late, and Sil had more or less wound down for the day. He was already in pajamas, he’d had some wine, and although he was still in work mode, he’d been planning to wrap it up and get some sleep soon.

“So?”

Sil sighed. “Yes,” he said, “you can come in. I’ll call the lobby and let them know. I trust you can handle operating the elevator by yourself.”

“They’re not gonna let me in.”

“Yes, they will. I’ll tell them you’re a visitor, that you were invited—they’ll verify it all with you. They’ll probably recognize you anyway. You’re a memorable person, Mal.”

“Seriously, they’re not gonna do it. Can’t you just come down here?”

Sil hesitated. There was a lot of demand in Mal’s voice, but not enough to hide the undercurrent of distress. Sil might have found it intriguing, if he weren’t so tired and mildly annoyed. “Fine,” he said, trying not to sound snappish. “Give me a few minutes.”

“All right,” Mal said, and hung up. Sil pointedly said, “You’re _welcome_ ,” to his phone, then stood, stretched, and went back to his room. He rummaged through the uppermost layer of his hamper for the outfit he’d worn earlier that day, and once he’d donned his slightly wrinkled clothes, he grabbed a jacket, put his shoes on, and headed out.

The elevator seemed louder this time of night, but the lobby was quieter. Sil felt as if the few people in the room were watching him, wondering what had managed to coax him out of his home at this hour. _A deeply, lamentably attractive nuisance_ , Sil silently answered them, nodding curtly at the doorman and stepping out into the night.

He zipped up his jacket, wishing he’d picked a warmer one, and looked around for Mal. When he didn’t see him right away, Sil was hit with the absurd suspicion that he was about to fall victim to some kind of prank, that Mal had lured him down here for the sole purpose of breaking into his apartment and robbing him. It made no sense whatsoever, Sil knew, unless Mal’s burglary method involved scaling the glass side of the building with suction cups strapped to his hands and feet like a human gecko.

Besides, there he was, loitering an odd distance away from the door as if he didn’t really want to come in after all. Sil walked over to him, feeling tired and cold and overworked and irritable, and all of them more than usual. He was winding up for a lecture, or at least a snarky comment, but he swallowed it down once he finally got close enough to see Mal in the darkness.

He was a mess. His hair was in his face, though it did nothing to hide his bruises. A patch of dried blood at the corner of his mouth matched the abrasions on his cheek. His body language was more guarded than ever, and although he didn’t draw back when Sil approached, he looked like he wanted to.

“What—” Sil said, not knowing where to begin or how to go on. Mal nodded over his shoulder at the apartment complex.

“Can we go _in_ now?” he asked. Sil merely stepped closer and looked up at his face, trying to assess the damage.

“What happened?” he finally said. “Were you attacked? Mugged? Stabbed?”

“Yeah, Sil, I’ve been stabbed, and instead of going to the ER, I decided to just triage it up at your apartment.”

“You _should_ go to the ER,” Sil said. He took a step back and beckoned for Mal to follow him to the front door. “I’ll get a car. Come sit in the lobby while you wait.”

“Forget it,” Mal said, turning to leave, and doing it with such a visible amount of effort that Sil realized he’d been leaning against the side of the building for support. “This is bullshit. If you’re not gonna let me stay, I’ll find somewhere else to crash for the night.”

Sil closed the distance between them before Mal could get too far, driven by both concern and annoyance at his melodramatic behavior. He grabbed Mal’s arm to stop him, and when Mal jerked it free, he locked up and held his breath, waiting for the obvious pain to subside. Sil didn’t apologize, but he withdrew, gesturing to the door again. “Come in,” he said, somehow both placating and stern. “Come.”

Mal grit his teeth, then nodded stiffly and followed Sil inside. They crossed the lobby in urgent silence, and this time Sil knew it wasn’t his paranoia—every eye in the room looked at them, then looked again. Mal kept his own eyes on the floor and moved even more warily than usual, as if he’d lost some kind of protection. It wasn’t until they stepped into the enclosed space of the elevator that Sil realized he was missing his bag.

Once they made it to the apartment, Sil directed Mal straight to the bathroom, instructing him to take a seat while he went to the medicine cabinet. Mal lowered the toilet lid and sat down, moving slowly to avoid causing himself more pain. He tried to slump forward and rest his elbows on his knees, but Sil stood in front of him and took Mal’s chin in his hand, lifting his head back up so matter-of-factly that Mal could neither protest nor resist. He did flinch when Sil started dabbing at the cuts on his face with disinfectant, but Sil only held him in place more firmly, and Mal had no choice but to try and adjust to the sting. Once he’d gotten used to it, he sat there, motionless and listless, staring across the room at absolutely nothing.

Sil continued to work his way around the broken skin and found himself shaking his head. “So,” he said quietly, “you _were_ mugged, I assume?”

Mal’s eyes didn’t move, but he nodded faintly.

“Where?”

Mal shrugged as painlessly as he could manage. “I dunno. Few blocks down, I guess.”

“Took everything, it looks like.”

“Yeah. Well—” Mal drew a shallow breath and held it so he could bend down and unlace one of his boots, forcing Sil to stop tending to his face for a moment. He fished around in the shoe until he found what he was looking for, extracting a small wad of bills with bitter triumph. Sil wrinkled his nose.

“Foot money?” he said, as Mal put the cash in his pocket and leaned down again to unlace his other boot. He fumbled with the shoelaces, and Sil took his cue, laying the medical supplies on the counter and helping Mal remove his boots. He made adjustments to the rest of his clothes while he was at it, unbuttoning or unzipping articles as needed just to make sitting and breathing a little less of a chore.

Thanks to Mal’s tendency to dress for utility rather than appearance, his clothing wasn’t very restrictive to begin with. Still, when Sil tried to help him take his jacket off, Mal locked up again, faster than before. He drew in a sharp breath, held it, and reached instinctively for his side before pausing with his hand half-closed around empty air. Sil watched the way Mal’s arm hovered before he forced himself to lower it again, slowly. “There’s more?”

Mal shook his head to hide the fact that he couldn’t quite speak yet. “It’s fine,” he managed to say, but Sil was already pulling at the hem of his shirt, lifting it carefully to inspect the damage for himself. Mal focused on holding still and breathing steadily while Sil got a look at the mottled, vaguely footprint-shaped bruise on his side.

“I reiterate,” Sil began slowly, without taking his eyes off the dark, lopsided shape, “that you should seek professional medical attention.”

“I _reiterate_ ,” Mal sneered, “that you should shut—” He drew another seething breath when Sil touched the bruise lightly with his fingertip, and he left the rest of his response open to interpretation.

“You need a hospital.”

Mal exhaled slowly, with forced calm. “No.”

“I’ll take you.”

“God, no.”

Sil shifted his jaw, not hiding his disapproval, but he conceded for now. After giving Mal a tissue to hold against his split lip, Sil left him alone for a moment to get an ice pack from the kitchen. And when he opened his freezer and remembered that he didn’t _have_ an ice pack, he put some ice cubes in a ziplock bag and brought them to Mal instead.

Mal tensed up more than usual when the ice pack was applied to his bruise, but once he adjusted to the sensation, he took the bag himself and allowed Sil to finish cleaning up his face. While he gave the cuts and scrapes a final once-over, Sil said, “What happened, exactly?”

Mal exhaled as forcefully as he could stand to, as if he wanted to snort derisively but couldn’t spare the breath. “Boring night here, huh? You want the blow-by-blow?”

“I want to decide for myself if you need a hospital or not.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t handled before,” Mal said, ignoring the fact that the last time this sort of thing had happened was when he was at least twenty years younger. “I got jumped on the way here, couple blocks away. Figured I was getting the hang of finding my way around this place, so I tried taking a shorter route. Probably should’ve stuck to the main roads. They just wanted my stuff, though. Left as soon as they got my bag.”

“More than one person?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?”

Mal winced as a drop of disinfectant squeezed out of the swab and seeped into a cut. “Why?”

“A large group could be easier to find. Might be able to track them down and get your things back.”

“What, _you_?”

“No, _obviously_. You can file a report.”

“Forget it.” Mal shifted on his seat, trying to find a position that would take any weight off his injured side. After a moment of silence, in which Mal felt that Sil was waiting for him to say something more, Mal added, “It was two guys. All right? Two guys—and the older guy barely did anything. Basically a one-on-one fight with some alley-dweller while his friend grabbed my bag and peaced out. Impressive, huh?”

Sil continued to brush the cotton swab against Mal’s face patiently, devoting all of his attention to the task and seemingly none of it to what Mal was saying. Mal waited a second to see if he had any more needling questions about the incident. “I mean, have _you_ ever been in a fight before?” Mal went on. “Have you ever even _seen_ a fight? A real one, not just disabling some random drunk on the subway, where the rickety, piece of shit train does half the work for you. An _actual_ fight, where you’re the target and the other guy’s motive is just to beat the hell out of you. It’s not like a movie. Everyone thinks it’s like a fucking movie because that’s all they see. That whole ‘second wind’ bullshit—most of the time, you can feel your energy going _fast_ , and it doesn’t come back. No one ever lasts as long as they think they will. And it doesn’t matter that I spend all my time hiking and shit like that; it just doesn’t translate to a fight with another grown man. I’m fucking lucky I didn’t get off worse than this.”

There. He’d given Sil more than enough to work with, if he wanted to craft some cutting, dryly sarcastic remark about Mal’s predicament. But Sil didn’t seem to want to. He’d been diligently cleaning Mal’s face all throughout his little diatribe, waiting for him to run out of words, and when he finally spoke again, it was only to point out what Mal already knew: “I didn’t say anything.”

Mal glared. “Yeah, but you were thinking it.”

Sil paused for the first time and stood a little straighter to look Mal in the eye. He stared blankly for a moment, then, without breaking eye contact, he pressed the disinfecting swab firmly against Mal’s cheek. Mal winced and drew away sharply, and as Sil dried the spot, Mal decided to follow his lead and just keep his mouth shut for the time being.

When Sil finished with his face, he gathered the medical supplies and disposed of them, then went to the sink to wash his hands. “You should clean up,” he said. “I can run a bath.”

“Fine.”

“Leave your clothes outside the door, and I’ll put them through the wash.”

“Fine,” Mal said again. He waited for Sil to get the bath going and leave, relishing the thought of being alone again for a while, but before Sil went to the tub, he brought Mal a cup of water from the sink. Mal looked up at him, then at the cup, taking it carefully but not drinking from it yet. Sil turned his attention to the bath faucet, adjusting the knobs and making sure the temperature wasn’t too extreme in either direction, and Mal, suddenly overwhelmed by the combined effects of being assaulted, robbed, interrogated, and looked after, all in one evening, couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I still don’t trust you.”

He kept his eyes on the paper cup in his hands, but he could see in his peripheral vision that Sil had paused at the tub, the water rushing just over his fingertips. He stared for a few seconds, and even without direct eye contact, Mal felt the scrutiny in his gaze. When Sil finally looked away again, he returned to the sink, gathered the remaining blood-and-disinfectant-soaked cotton swabs into the trash, tied and removed the bag, and simply responded, “Then I still respect you.” And then, on his way out, he added, “Keep the door unlocked, just in case.”

Mal didn’t like being coddled, and he especially didn’t like being reminded that passing out in Sil’s bathroom was a very real possibility at the moment. But due to either a lack of energy or a flare-up of common sense, he did as he was told. He got undressed and tossed his clothes outside the door, then shut it again and returned to the tub. Lowering himself into it was a slow, sore process, but the gentle, pressureless sensation of warm water traveling up his body was worth it. For a while, he didn’t even attempt to wash himself. He just lay there, soaking in the warmth, wishing he’d indulged in this particular temptation during one of his previous visits, when he was in the condition to actually enjoy it.

Out in the hallway, he heard a quiet thrumming sound which he assumed was the washing machine. It was oddly nice, like a bit of mundane, domestic normalcy to balance out how harrowing the rest of the evening had been. Sil cut through the soothing background noise only once, knocking on the bathroom door to check on how Mal was doing. Mal told him he was fine, and while he knew he didn’t sound convincing, he must have sounded sufficiently annoyed, because Sil left him alone after that.

After a while, when Mal was able to take a deep breath and hold it, he slipped beneath the surface of the water and submerged himself fully. Outside, he’d felt like a hollow tree, old and stiff with the wind and cold going right through him. But here, all sensation was reduced to the steady rush of blood through his body, and the warmth enveloping and seeping into him. He was so relaxed that when the time came to lift himself out of the water, it only made his bruises hurt all the more. Cringing and somewhat humbled, Mal lowered himself again and slowly, inch by inch, hoisted himself out of the tub. He had to dry off carefully, too, but when he looked in the mirror, he found that the damage wasn’t as extreme as he expected. At the very least, he’d managed to make it out without a black eye. He touched his cheek and jaw, testing the pain, then he dried his hair, wrapped a towel around his waist, and headed out into the hallway, trying not to look as exhausted as he felt.

“Hey,” he said when he reached the living room, drawing Sil’s attention away from his paperwork. “My clothes done yet?”

“Not even close,” Sil said, assessing Mal carefully. “Spin cycle—second round.”

“…that bad, huh?” Mal said, and Sil eased up a bit at his self-deprecating humor.

“Well…had to scrub some blood off them first,” he said. Before Mal could look too uncomfortable about that, Sil gestured toward the hallway. “Left a robe on the doorknob for you, if you want.”

Mal nodded his thanks and went back the way he’d come, finding the plain gray bathrobe hanging from the doorknob and trailing on the floor. He stepped into the bathroom again to put it on—less for the sake of modesty, which Mal had admittedly never had, and more to keep Sil from looking at his bruises, which he had admittedly already seen. He cinched the belt around his waist without thinking, then went rigid as pain radiated out from his side, undoing all the relaxation he’d gained from his soak in the tub. With his eyes shut and his teeth set, he waited for the pain to abate before he exhaled slowly and returned to the living room.

Sil was reviewing his work again, as usual, though he put the papers down when Mal joined him on the couch. “Feeling any better?”

Mal considered the question while he tried to get as comfortable as possible, given the circumstances. Other than his surface-level cuts and scrapes, the bruise on his side was the only specific source of pain. Nevertheless, his entire body ached with stress and tension that it was only just beginning to let go of. He was no stranger to injuries or overexertion, but he’d had very few experiences with sickness since he was a child, and the pain-induced nausea that now wracked his body was something he could have done without. “Yes and no,” he said truthfully. He leaned back against the couch and looked at the coffee table, where Sil’s paperwork lay beside the contents of Mal’s pockets, which Sil must have emptied before putting his clothes in the laundry. There wasn’t much: just the wad of bills from Mal’s boot and his cell phone.

“At least they left you with something, right?” Sil said, when he noticed where Mal was looking.

“Yeah,” Mal agreed. “Turns out even thieves don’t want my phone.”

Sil chuckled as he got up and went to the kitchen, returning with another glass of water and some over the counter painkillers for Mal, who accepted them gratefully. He accepted Sil’s offer of food with a little more reluctance, afraid of worsening his nausea, though he conceded that taking the pills on an empty stomach would likely make it worse anyway. Eventually he agreed to have some toast with peanut butter, and he ate it as slowly as he could, listening for the timer on the dryer to let him know when his clothes were ready.

When it finally went off, Mal registered it with a tiny jolt of his head, indicating that he’d already started to doze. He rubbed his eyes and rose to his feet stiffly while Sil gathered his plate and glass and brought them back to the kitchen. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” he said helpfully, rinsing the plate and putting it in the dishwasher.

Mal nodded sleepily and went to the dryer to retrieve his clothes. There were so few of them; he’d never had a large wardrobe, but he usually had options, at the very least. He rolled up his pants, socks, and fingerless gloves, folded his jacket over itself a few times, and put on his pajamas, which at the moment consisted of boxers and a very faded Blue Öyster Cult T-shirt. He rummaged through the medicine cabinet for the toothbrush and a bandage to put over his worst cut, brushed his teeth for as long as he could stand to, then trudged to the bedroom, fighting gravity every step of the way.

Sil was already in there, getting his pajamas out of the dresser. He did a brief double take at the sight of Mal, who realized this was probably the most “normal” he’d ever looked at Sil’s apartment, dressed for bed in underwear and an old band T-shirt. He barely had the energy to look at Sil, let alone say anything to him like “sorry for fucking up your evening” or “thanks for taking care of me.” He simply got into bed and slowly settled down while Sil took his turn in the bathroom. Mal was vaguely aware of the sounds of him getting ready for bed, but he was fading fast, and before he knew it Sil was climbing into bed beside him and turning off the light.

Sil had been especially mindful of boundaries this evening, refraining from making any demands or putting any pressure on Mal once he’d gotten a satisfactory explanation of what had happened to him. Still, Mal lay with his back to Sil and pulled the covers up over the lower half of his face, blocking himself off and blocking Sil out as much as possible. If he’d had a shell, he would have spent the night curled up inside it. The scent of Sil’s sheets filled his head with the artificial sweetness of detergent and fabric softener, but the borderline sensory overload helped cloud the pain and the lingering nausea. Mal couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt significant pain or discomfort and had the option not to, and it was tempting. Addicting. He let another breath in, and he was asleep by the time he let it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The prelude that Sil was so blasphemously using as generic background music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGd624HzDc)


End file.
